Hi Gang,
Internet bubble? What internet bubble?
Yesterday, Groupon filed the paperwork to become a publicly traded company. Sometime this year, you will be able to buy stock in Groupon and join the other 500 million people making Groupon stock discount jokes.
Last year, Groupon turned down a $6 BILLION offer from Google. Laughable, right? Well guess what: Greed is still good. Yesterdays filing valued Groupon at around $20 billion.
Here are the best of the fun facts about Groupon that we’ve learned in the last 24 hours:
1. Groupon LOST over $400 million last year
2. Groupon’s CEO Andrew Mason takes and annual salary of $575.00. Poor guy – I hope he’ll make it. Mason holds 7.7% of the companys stock.
3. Mason is NOT the largest shareholder. That honor belongs to Eric Lefkofsky, who owns 21.6%…of $20 BILLION dollars.
4. In the last 2 years, Groupon has grown over 20,000%
5. Groupon has 83.1 million subscribers in 145 US markets
6. Groupon has over 7,000 employees
7. Groupon. Is. THREE. YEARS. OLD.
Personally, this company and IPO remind me a lot of the “Irrational Exuberance” days of 2000 when any company with a .com in its’ name shot to the moon. I have 2 concerns with Groupon:
1. They just bleed money. They’ve lost $114 million in Q1 of 2011 alone.
2. Their model is easy to duplicate. With competitors like LivingSocial, Google, Facebook, and other very large fish jumping into the space, Groupon is in no way an island.
What do you think? Would you buy Groupon stock?
Kevin Harmon
CEO Red Shorts Media
twitter: imadness
linkedin: THEKevinHarmon
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