Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
dealbook.nytimes.com
Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#2How long until they have to start selling it via their site at a discount?
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#3[deleted]
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#4IPO or not, we still won't be talking about them in 5 years.
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#5Of all the naysayers, the Hacker News community seemed to be one of the most consistent. I'm curious why that is? Is it because Groupon doesn't look ostensibly too technical? Is it a general disdain for commercial success? Is it for perceived arrogance? Is it a lack of business acumen?
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#6I don't know why the "per share" price is the headline number here -- what matters is the total valuation, which is $12.65 billion.
Dunno about you, but I'm not gonna be buying at that price.
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#7I predict that much like Demand Media [DMD], Groupon [GRPN] will be at less than half its IPO price within one year.
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#8Of all the naysayers, the Hacker News community seemed to be one of the most consistent. I'm curious why that is? Is it because Groupon doesn't look ostensibly too technical? Is it a general disdain for commercial success? Is it for perceived arrogance? Is it a lack of business acumen?
Wow, now there's a loaded question. Why don't you just ask us whether we're gonna stop beating our wives?
The reasons to be skeptical of Groupon are well documented. Not that it's a bad business, by any means, it's just that it's an industry with low barriers to entry and many competitors, and Groupon's early success is unsustainable since it was built on persuading businesses to offer ridiculously good deals which are likely to lose them money; businesses are wising up to this, deals are getting worse, people are getting less interested, and in general the whole social-coupon industry seems to be settling into a new equilibrium in which a $10^10 valuation for Groupon seems excessive.
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#9Putting aside the questionable nature of Groupon's IPO discussed ad nauseum here, this trick of only selling a very small part of the company in the IPO to keep price high by restricting supply seems, for lack of a better word, strange. So, I buy some stock at a price inflated by the lack of supply as the company puts 5% of itself out there. For the supply-restricted price to make sense, though, I have to believe that either the supply is never going to be expanded by the company putting more pieces of itself out there on the market, or that I'll get mine in dividends before that happens. (Or that I can unload it on another sucker, but for the sake of analysis I'm trying to discuss the real value in terms of dividends and percentage of company owned rather than the gambling side.)
Well, obviously I'm not seeing any dividends any time soon for something like Groupon. What happens when more of the stock trickles on to the market? (How much of the company will become available as employee stock options?) Or if Groupon puts another 5% out there? What happens when the supply expands?
It seems like this is the sort of trick that's only going to work for a little while.
Re: Groupon Prices I.P.O. at $20 a Share
#10Of all the naysayers, the Hacker News community seemed to be one of the most consistent. I'm curious why that is? Is it because Groupon doesn't look ostensibly too technical? Is it a general disdain for commercial success? Is it for perceived arrogance? Is it a lack of business acumen?
The founders and early investors have all cashed out, they invent accounting metrics. When you look at the actions of their management team and combine it with weird accounting metrics, it would be more aptly named Grouponzi.
It isn't a lack of business accumen, divesting yourself of a business at the height of it's market cap is the right thing to do. The problem is that in order to do sell at the highest price you need to convince someone else that the business will be worth even more in the future. For being able to do that he is a brilliant business man.
If pouring cash into this business would make it profitable then why did 90% of their Series G go to cashing people out? It seems to me that if Andrew Mason believed what he says then he'd go all in and take a modest profit to secure himself for the rest of his life. Instead he sees what everyone else sees which is a business about to tank.