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Groupon hopes to raise $750M in IPO

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Freelance Hack, Jun 3, 2011.

  1. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Oh, I remember. It was one of the best, fastest flame outs ever.

    Funny that you still could find some nameplates.

    I managed Continental's naming rights deal with the Continental Airlines Arena for several years. One of our "benefits" was what was basically a bumper sticker on every garbage can in the joint.

    That was really great for our brand -- especially after they became tattered. It was a big ordeal to get them removed.
     
  2. Freelance Hack

    Freelance Hack Active Member

    http://www.ehow.com/how_4903073_buy-ipo-stock.html

    Read all the way to the bottom. It says some brokerage houses require $500K in accounts before granting access to IPOs.

    Keep in mind, you may still get access to some IPOs on occassion, but they most likely won't be the sought after stocks, like Groupon, LinkedIn, etc.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2015
  3. JackReacher

    JackReacher Well-Known Member

    Sweet. Looks like I'm good to go!!

    /bitter
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2015
  4. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

    Yeah, if you're a nobody and your broker is offering you an IPO, you probably don't want it.

    It means their big customers didn't snatch it up.

    Brokers are sales people. When a firm agrees to underwrite an IPO, it's their job to go out and sell it.

    When there's a lot of interest, the shares go to their big institutional customers, hedge funds, VIPs, etc.

    They use access to hot IPOs to leverage new business, and to grow their business in other ways.

    When there's not much interest, all of a sudden your broker is calling you up offering you a "hot" IPO. Yeah, sure. Believe that.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 1, 2015
  5. YankeeFan

    YankeeFan Well-Known Member

     
  6. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    On the plus side, you can now get three shares for the price of one!
     
  7. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    Back in the tech bubble, there was a brokerage firm, Wit Capital, that was able to get IPOs for regular schlubs like me. It was kind of a mess, you had to email just at the right time. But I was able to get some good ones. I am going to go back to my records and find what I got.
     
  8. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    In 1999, I got IPOs from Goldman Sachs, WWF, Charter Communications, Barnes and Noble.com, something called Cobalt. 50 or 100 shares each. Fun times.
     
  9. Brooklyn Bridge

    Brooklyn Bridge Well-Known Member

    Not for nothing, but working in the restaurant industry part time, Groupon was the bane of my existence.
     
  10. J-School Blue

    J-School Blue Member

    I am curious how businesses actually feel about it. Do the potential customers offset the losses the mass discounters might cause?
     
  11. sgreenwell

    sgreenwell Well-Known Member

    Slate has had a couple good articles on Groupon that I'll paraphrase here:

    - If someone bought a coupon for a $50 dinner for $25, then Groupon then got $12.50 of that $25. Meaning, the original restaurant is actually getting $12.50 and putting out $50 in product.

    - Groupon got their money upfront, meaning the restaurant was out $12.50 immediately for each coupon sold.

    - The vast majority of the people using coupons were not repeat customers.

    - Most of the repeat business tended to be regulars who already went to the place, i.e. people who were happily paying $50 for that meal in the first place but gladly took advantage of the one-time discount, or worse, stocked up on multiple coupons.

    - As a result, the renew rate for Groupon was very, very low. On top of that, the sales staff is allegedly incredibly pushy, not very forthcoming about how the terms of the deal are and generally not helpful.
     
  12. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    A co-worker of mine runs a small business on the side. He did a Groupon offer and said it was a nightmare. He lost a ton of money on it, none of the people who used the offer were people who would ever return, and most of them were a pain in the ass. He would never do it again.

    Also have a friend who bought a deal through Groupon, and when she called to schedule an appointment to use it the company told her they weren't making any more appointments. They sold more than 100 but apparently only intended to honor 15 of them.

    This thing is going to crash, hard.
     
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