Groupon IPO — Game (Back) On!

Groupon originally planned to go public in mid-September but had to delay things. A big reason was the extreme volatility in the markets. But Groupon also had other issues, such as with its accounting policies. The Securities and Exchange Commission indicated the company could only count the commission on a voucher — the result was that Groupon had to restate 2011′s revenues to $688 million from $1.52 billion.

Then there was the situation of the company’s CEO, Andrew Mason. He wrote a memo to employees in which he lambasted the media and indicated things were going gangbusters. Well again, the SEC took issue and required the document to be disclosed to shareholders — with the proviso that investors should ignore it!

But despite all the drama, it looks the Groupon IPO is back on track, according to a report from All Things Digital.

The road show is expected to start next week (the process typically takes two to three weeks). This certainly is good news for Groupon�s underwriters — Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) — who are desperate to get a big deal done.

However, the IPO is likely to still encounter headwinds. For the most part, the media exposure for Groupon has been overwhelmingly negative. And the biggest concern is the core business model. How loyal is the user base of Groupon? Can the company continue to grow without its huge marketing expenditures? What about the intense competition, such as from LivingSocial, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)?

It seems likely that Groupon will not achieve its $20 billion-plus valuation goal. Instead, it might be from $3 billion to $6 billion, which actually is below LinkedIn�s (NYSE:LNKD) market capitalization of $8.4 billion.

But Groupon really needs to go public. A cash infusion definitely will be helpful to keep up with aggressive expenditures. And, with a public stock, Groupon will have a currency for acquisitions.

But even as the markets have stabilized, the IPO probably still will be a rough ride.

Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He is also the author of �All About Short Selling� and�All About Commodities.� Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli. As of this writing, he did not own a positioning any of the stocks named here.