Monday, December 17, 2012

Groupon: WSJ Says ‘Scaled-Back’ IPO Imminent

Groupon, the daily “deals” e-commerce venture that filed to go public in June, and that has reportedly delayed its offering several times, is now planning to sell 10% of the company in the next two weeks, report The Wall Street Journal‘s Randall Smith and Shayndi Raice, citing multiple anonymous sources.

The offering would value the company at less than $12.5 billion and would be a step back from the previous scale contemplated for an offering, the authors write. It might net the company $500 million to $700 million in proceeds.

Tonight’s article echoes a report yesterday by AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, who wrote that the company will start its “road show” for investors next week. In fact, Swisher seems to have scooped the matter on the size of the offering, writing that, “Some had previously estimated that Groupon would have an IPO of up to $25 billion. Now it could be half that.”

Groupon has been dogged by accounting issues, with requests for clarification from the Securities & Exchange Commission regarding such issues as how it counts non-GAAP profit.

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