Doomsday For Groupon?

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Groupon had an option of being bought out by Google for $6 billion earlier this year. They rejected it. Now, the local deals in your neighborhood website is wondering if that was such a good idea. Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times discusses the possibilities of Groupon being no more:

The title of the article was “Amazon.bomb.”

Back in 1999, Barron’s memorably splashed that headline across its cover. The article was a virtual indictment of Amazon: it questioned the company’s ability ever to turn a profit, it argued that it was spending far too much money on marketing, it suggested that the company was using misleading accounting metrics and that its business model was not unique enough to keep more established competitors from eating its lunch.

Fast-forward to today. If you were to replace the word Amazon in the original Barron’s article with Groupon, the high-flying online coupon company in the midst of pursuing an initial public offering, the story would be almost exactly the same — except we don’t know yet if Groupon has such a happy ending.

As Andrew Mason, the chief executive of Groupon, crisscrosses the country this week on an I.P.O. road show for his company — he started in Manhattan on Monday — he is hoping to convince investors that Groupon is indeed the next Amazon, and that the naysayers are wrong.

Last week, I wrote a column raising questions about how it was possible that the banks underwriting Groupon’s I.P.O. could have ever considered valuing the company at as much as $30 billion just three months ago, and I predicted the company would more likely be valued at easily less than half of that.

Read more at The New York Times