Money, money, money
Groupon has reportedly been chatting to bankers about a potential IPO that would value the discount offers service at up to $25bn.
While the figure is not an official valuation yet, if it stuck it would make Groupon the highest-valued venture-backed company ever to IPO, beating Google, The WSJ reported.
Bloomberg Businessweek broke the story following a talk with 2 sources close to the negotiations, who said that $25bn was the figure being talked about, although obviously banks are likely to puff up the valuation a bit.
In just over 2 years, Groupon's founder, Andrew Mason has built what is thought to be the fastest-growing company so far, the newspaper reported.
Apparently the service's deal-of-the-day business is predicted to pull in $3bn to $4bn this year, up from $750m in 2010, a person familiar with Groupon's finances told Bloomberg.
The firm was reportedly valued at $1.4bn in April 2010, went after funding in November at $3bn and snubbed Google's offer of $6bn in January.
Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO, former eBay board member and now investor and member of Groupon's board, reportedly said: "Starbucks and eBay were standing still compared to what is happening with Groupon. I candidly haven't witnessed anything quite like this. They have cracked the code on a very significant opportunity."
The WSJ [via Dow Jones Venture Source] said that if the company was valued at $25bn on IPO day, it would become the highest-valued venture-backed company ever at IPO stage, beating the current record holder, Google at $24.6bn.
If this happened it might seem even more impressive considering Groupon started in 2008, whereas Google reportedly built up its business for 6 years before going public.
It is thought the second-highest VC-backed IPO valuation is Chinese brokerage Huatai Securities Co that went public in 2010 on the Shanghai Stock Exchange at a $16.4 billion valuation. In the US, optical networking systems firm Corvis takes second place as it IPO-ed at a valuation of $14.2bn in July 2000.
Of course all these IPO valuations could be trumped by Facebook if it decides to go public as there is apparently talk of its valuation reaching $75bn or even $100bn by 2012 when it is thought it might take the plunge.
