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Groupon Files for $750 Million IPO

Discount e-mail service Groupon announced today that yes, finally, it is filing for an initial public offering. Morgan Stanley (and not Goldman Sachs!) will underwrite it, and it will trade under the GRPN stock symbol. The SEC filing, according to Business Insider, reveals that the company has 83 million subscribers, and sold 30 million coupons in 2010 — only to sell 28 million in the first quarter of 2011. Its Q1 revenues for 2011 were $645 million, which isn’t too far south from the $713 million in revenues it earned in all of 2010. (Though because of marketing and payback to businesses, the company ended up $413 million in the red.) “Expect us to make ambitious bets on our future that distract us from our current business. Some bets we’ll get right, and others we’ll get wrong, but we think it’s the only way to continuously build disruptive products,” wrote founder and CEO Andrew Mason in a letter to potential investors. “We are unusual and we like it that way.”

Groupon Files For $750 Million IPO; Lost $413 Million In 2010 [Business Insider]

Groupon Files for $750 Million IPO