
Groupon Sliding - antr
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/04/20/groupon-falling-down-market-valuation-approaching-old-google-buyout-offer-price/?awesm=tnw.to_1E7Ly&utm_campaign=social%20media&utm_medium=share%20button&utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Groupon%20falling%20down:%20Market%20valuation%20approaching%20old%20Google%20buyout%20offer%20price
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julian37
Off-topic, but does anybody else find the Groupon stock "chart" on that page
infuriating?! It _looks_ as if it's interactive, suggesting that you can use
the control at the top to zoom in on a particular time range, or use the
slider at the bottom to go back in time. And the "hand" cursor on mouse-over
suggests that you _can_ interact with it. But clicking anywhere just serves to
reload the page! Maybe it's just me but it took me two full-page reloads to
realize I was being conned.

@thenextweb.com: please embed the real, functional widget; or, failing that,
embed a chart that doesn't look like a widget. If you really, really must
embed a functional-looking but non-functional picture of a widget, at least
link it to the real widget.

And if for some reason none of the above is possible, and you really have to
include a picture of something that looks like you can interact with it,
_don't make it clickable_ because doing so will confuse the hell out of people
like me.

~~~
Gormo
It's a screenshot from Google Finance. They didn't bother to crop out the UI
controls.

~~~
MaysonL
And they ignored the "©2012 Google" at the bottom of the page...

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gojomo
I predict May will be a very cruel month for Groupon. Around mid-month, three
big things happen:

• they have to report their next-quarter results, the first reporting after
they belatedly recharacterized a profit as a loss. They'll be watched like a
hawk, and even if they report good results many will have doubts.

• the 6-month lockup on many insiders selling their shares expires

• Facebook goes public. Contrasted against Facebook and other newly-public
real-profits, non-deceptive-accounting tech companies, GRPN will stick out as
the shifty exception. It won't have the halo of being mentally grouped with
other more solid companies much longer.

~~~
antr
i just hope that the company goes bust before the lock-up expires. i'd rather
see VCs write-off another bad investment rather than seeing that stock be
dumped to pension funds.

~~~
chollida1
Groupon isn't in any major index.

Groupon doesn't pay any form of dividend.

There is no major positive event to trade it around.

Given that, I'm curious to know what pension fund you think would invest in
Groupon?

~~~
antr
pension funds' investment scope are not restricted by any of the above, where
did you get that information from?

~~~
chollida1
> pension funds' investment scope are not restricted by any of the above,

Agreed, they aren't restirited to buying stocks that fit that criteria, but
that is how they invest.

> where did you get that information from?

Hedgie here. Almost all pension funds don't invest in stocks unless: a) they
are part of an index and the fund just buys the index b) the stock pays out
some sort of income that the fund can use to fund its liabilities to the
pension holders. c) the fund has some advantage that the rest of the market
doesn't have that can make it money off of hte stock.

I can't really see any of the above applying globally to pension funds that
would cause them to be a net buyer of groupon.

Now those funds, typically hedgies, will get in and trade groupon, ie by and
short the stock between chosen intervals.

you might not believe it from all the negative press groupon has gotten here
but there has been some strong buying happening from the hedgies, accompanied
by even stronger shorting.

The borrow has been the largest reason why shorting hasn't been stronger.

As to the original point of Groupon being "dumped on pension funds". You'd be
surprised but the quality of many of the investment professionals working at
pension funds, there are some really smart people working there.

They won't just buy groupon like complete idiots, they are typically very
intelligent investors. The only case I can see them being net buyers are the
points I originally listed.

1) they are forced to as they have to own certain indexes 2) the stock starts
paying out a large and consistent revenue stream the fund can use to cover
it's monthly liabilities. 3) they do a deal with groupon to put more money
into it that gets them a value well below what the current mkt value is.

~~~
borism
however, many pension funds do invest in VC funds.

------
NelsonMinar
This article editorializes "The company’s deflation has thrown something of a
pall over tech companies, and could introduce chop into the IPO waters".
Groupon is a special case. Much of their current woes is a new set of
questions about their accounting. Ie:
[http://retheauditors.com/2012/04/07/groupon-you-must-have-
fa...](http://retheauditors.com/2012/04/07/groupon-you-must-have-fallen-from-
the-sky/)

~~~
gojomo
I treat it as an instant credibility demerit against journalists and headline-
writers who casually group Groupon with other completely different, more tech-
heavy, more honest companies.

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drumdance
Dunno about their business prospects but as a consumer I've found myself using
them and LivingSocial more and more. Not restaurants, but things like yoga
classes, massage, museum exhibits etc.

~~~
PhrosTT
Using Groupon at a restaurant is like telling the waitstaff, "Hi I'd like you
to treat me like shit tonight."

~~~
mikescar
Or, you have two more realistic options:

\- Present the coupon when settling the bill \- Let your server know upfront
that you will tip against the price before the coupon. And then do it.

~~~
X-Istence
The coupons I bought from Groupon a while back required me to present the
coupons before being seated...

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ErrantX
Clearly Groupon is going to fail, that seems fairly certain now (right?).

But the real question is what the long term fall out from that will be?

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aresant
This company is about Andrew Mason.

From a former employee quoted on TC - "For all the shit he takes, you should
especially worry if Andrew isn’t running Groupon."

I loved this.

Mason in the press gets an undercurrent of "not from the valley" or "former
music major from northwestern" or "eccentric".

As a result the tilt of stories about Groupon suggest that it was built on
"won the lottery" luck, not "when preparation meets opportunity" luck.

The guy built the fastest-to-a-billion in REVENUE ever online.

I get the inherent problems @ Groupon, but can't help remembering when Steve
Jobs was dismissed as a has-been that was lucky to ride on the coattails of
Woz, and thrown to the wolves by the board.

~~~
klochner
We need a corollary to Godwin's law for references to Steve Jobs.

Together they would constitute the 'gambler's ruin' of online discussion
forums.

------
lawrence
I haven't really noticed the pall. LinkedIn and Jive are doing very, very well
on the public markets. As far as the private markets, valuations and
acquisition prices don't seem to be, ahem, slipping too much.

------
mathattack
They are in a tough spot.

I think the article overstates the impact of their stock performance on the
overall tech market. If they underperform, it might keep sanity in the market.
And most tech firms don't follow their business model. It may hurt coupon site
fast followers, but that's not a big loss. The Facebook IPO will erase any bad
memories of Groupon.

------
rollypolly
I hope this signals the end of that bubble.

~~~
arunoda
Yes! I believe it. We are experiencing the same here in Sri Lanka.

We had a great war of GroupOn like sites in past 6 months. But only one is
working on it greatly.

It is a FAD for me.

~~~
R_Symtex_II
I doubt its even that, and I question the due diligence of the People at said
Hedge Fund as Groupon has been using shadow banking and nefarious accounting
to hide massive loses since its inception.

[http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/04/groupon-inc-grpn-
accounting...](http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/04/groupon-inc-grpn-accounting-
issues-no-surprised/)

There is no accurate way to place a (positive) estimate/valuation of the
operation or its profitability, personally I doubt they even have operating
capital since it took that dive earlier this month. It looked to me like the
tail end of a significant short selling position finally came to fruition by
insiders who got in early.

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thecosas
Does anybody else just see this as the market being smart after seeing what
real money Groupon is/isn't making?

~~~
karlshea
Exactly. How anyone thought that Groupon was ever going to do well is a
complete mystery to me.

~~~
tatsuke95
The problem was "doing well" wasn't good enough.

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kevinlu310
This is exactly what I was and is expecting.

