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Groupon looks to cash in with $750M IPO

June 3, 2011 — 9:58am ET | By Jason Ankeny

Social commerce juggernaut Groupon filed Thursday for an initial public offering expected to raise roughly $750 million. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group and Credit Suisse Group will oversee the IPO, and Groupon will trade under the ticker GRPN. In a memo to employees, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said that going public would make it "easier to make big acquisitions'' and promised that all full-time employees will receive equity in the sale.

Each day, Groupon presents bargains from retailers or restaurants spanning across hundreds of international markets. According to the Groupon website, the service has saved shoppers more than $2 billion since launching in late 2008, with over 49 million coupons purchased to date; the IPO filing states the company generated 2010 revenues of $713.4 million, up a staggering 2,241 percent over 2009 revenues of $30.47 million. Some financial analysts estimate Groupon's full valuation somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 billion to $20 billion--late last year, the startup turned down an acquisition offer from Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) said to be valued at $6 billion.

Groupon's move is fueling increased concern that the current technology boom could turn out to be a bubble. The Groupon filing follows two weeks after professional networking service LinkedIn saw its shares more than double on its first day of trading--LinkedIn closed Thursday at $78.63, around 75 percent above its offering price. Also on Thursday, digital music service Pandora set its IPO price range at $7 to $9--the firm plans to raise as much as $141.6 million at a $1.4 billion valuation.

Groupon introduced an application optimized for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch in March 2010, enabling consumers to purchase, redeem and organize deals on-the-go. In addition, users can log in via Facebook Connect and map local Groupons in real time via their smartphone's GPS feature. In December 2010, Groupon partnered with location-based mobile media firm JiWire to roll out hyper-local offers targeting consumers based on their present whereabouts--two months later, Groupon signed with mobile commerce solutions provider ShopSavvy to deliver relevant deals to smartphone users, and in April, it acquired Pelago, the iFund-backed developer behind the location-based mobile social networking application Whrrl.

For more:
- read this Bloomberg article