The Chicago-based company sold 35 million shares at $20 each, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, the biggest IPO by a US Internet company since Google Inc. raised $1.9 billion in its 2004 initial offering. Groupon had offered 30 million shares for $16 to $18 apiece, or as much as $540 million.
Groupon’s IPO attracted interest even as internal missteps, unprofitability and an expensive valuation compared with its peers made some investors skeptical.
The size and price were designed to benefit from a surge in first day buying, said Sam Hamadeh, chief executive officer of New York researcher PrivCo. “This is as much of a marketing event tonight and tomorrow as a financing event,” Hamadeh said after the pricing late yesterday. “Engineering a pop for Friday is positive buzz which the company needs.”
The shares will start trading today on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol GRPN.
While Groupon said in its prospectus that it won’t need to use the proceeds from the IPO for at least a year and has no urgent cash needs, the company owed almost twice as much to merchants at the end of September as it held in cash. Marketing costs rose 37 percent in the latest quarter, four times as quickly as its cash pile.
(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com