Groupon has filed for a much anticipated IPO, aiming to raise up to $750 million.
Last year, the company famously turned down a $6 billion offer from Google. Now it faces growing competition from all sides (including from Google).
The company lost $413 million last year. Groupon’s revenue for Q1 this year was $644.7 million. In April, the company acquired Pelago, makers of the Whrrl check-in app. Since then, the company has been working out deals with other location-based services to get offers in front of more customers when they’re most relevant.
Experian HItwise shared the following Groupon stats with us:
- Groupon.com, by market share of US visits, is the 64th most visited site in the US (out of 1mm+) for the week ending May 28th.
- Groupon.com captured 14 million + total US visits for the week ending May 28th.
- The market share of US visits for Groupon.com increased 564% comparing last week vs. same week in 2010.
- Groupon.com captured 76% of visits among a category of 81 Group Buying sites for the week ending May 28th.
- Searches for “groupon” in the US have increased 462% comparing last week vs. same week in 2010.
- Regarding the Expedia.com deal – Group Buying sites sent 5% of visits to Travel sites last week. That represents a 16% increase in referral traffic from Group Buying sites to Travel sites comparing last week vs. same week in 2010.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse are the IPO’s lead underwriters. You can look at the filing itself here.
At the All Things Digital D9 conference, CEO Andrew Mason dodged questions about the IPO, but did have some other interesting things to say. For example, he considers there to be three types of competitors: straight-up clones, sleeping giants, and the ones out of left field. Mason takes issues with the clones, saying that Groupon spent two years pivoting before it landed on its current model. We are proud of the idea in the way anyone would be if they invented something,” he’s quoted as saying. “All the clones were drafting everything we were doing. I was a music major, and with music, we call that plagiarism. But in business it’s called competition.”
Later, he added, “competition is good for the consumer,” “innovation is good for the space, ” and “As along as we make a product that people love more than anything else, we’ll be successful.”
He also got in a jab at Google Offers, saying, “What they really did well is integration with Buzz.”
Mason says local commerce is a twelve to fourteen billion dollar market, and that Groupon will be happy if it gets 10% of it.