Groupon became famous and went public in 2011 by hawking restaurant discounts to people who Instagram their food, but since then, they’ve realized that emailing people coupon spam isn’t a profitable model. Now they’ve switched from pushing coupons to selling a motley assortment of very strange shit, like a mane for your cat, or counterfeit Durex condoms riddled with small holes.
On Wednesday night, Danzig headlined the Cuban Club in Ybor City, Florida. During the opening of doom-rock ballad "Blood and Tears," the eponymous gloom-metal god noticed someone in the audience recording the performance and demanded, "Somebody punch that fucking asshole right there."
There was a flurry of interest in Groupon's stock just before the IPO, driving up the price a bit. But Wall Street's crush on the online discounter was short-lived: Its stock plummeted today, for the second time in a month. Maybe reason will actually prevail in tech investing, just this once.
Want to short Groupon's stock? Get in line: the financially questionable online discounter is now ranked in the absolute most expensive category of stocks to bet against. Some 5.5 percent of the company's shares are out to short investors, versus 3.3 percent for an average S&P 500 issue.
Groupon goes public tomorrow, and the financially frightful coupon startup should be a stock market hit: With about 10 times more prospective buyer than shares, the stock priced today at $20, up from an expected $16 - $18. So it looks like the tech bubble, inflated heretofore by private investment deals, is going public. How exciting.
It's make or break time. Metastasizing corporate basketcase Groupon is going public Friday. Are stock investors crazy enough to value the unprofitable company at $11 billion?
Groupon's long journey from flailing startup to multi-billion-dollar Wall Street obsession has played out like an opera, with subplots involving orgiastic young sales reps, brutal German managers, a puppet-master chairman, and amazing levels of greed. Business Insider's Nicholas Carlson went behind the scenes, talked to people in the know, and filed the sensational report that appears below.
What a basketcase: Groupon has slashed its proposed valuation to $12 billion from $30 billion as it ramps up for an initial public offering. So if you're in the market for a technically insolvent online discounter with shady accounting, now is the time to buy! Goldman Sachs is involved, so you just know it's a good deal.
Investors are willing to gamble less and less on Groupon's imaginary future profits, various fund managers told Bloomberg, thanks to the near constant reminders about just how imaginary those profits are. One fund manager thinks the online coupon startup has seen its value fall to as low as $3 billion from $25 billion.
Groupon was hit with its second lawsuit in as many months from employees who said they were screwed out of their overtime. This comes shortly after the online discounter lost its COO, its sales chief, its IPO date, and its favorite bullshit accounting metric. It's almost as though Groupon is some sort of hive of misery and deceit!
Surprise: Wildly unprofitable money pit Groupon canceled its investor roadshow and withdrew its IPO schedule, says the Wall Street Journal. Also, there's a new SEC inquiry into the company. But everything will be back on track just as soon as the tech bubble returns, honest!
