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One Year Later: NY Post Considers Groupon's (GRPN) Rejected Google (GOOG) Offer

May 7, 2012 10:30 AM EDT
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Price: $9.71 -0.61%

Rating Summary:
    13 Buy, 17 Hold, 4 Sell

Rating Trend: Up Up

Today's Overall Ratings:
    Up: 17 | Down: 14 | New: 17
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Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN) shares are trading higher Monday morning following a reassuring letter from the company's CEO Andrew Mason earlier. The stock last traded at $10.61, up about 6.5 percent from Friday's closing price.

Mason's letter may be offsetting some negative sentiment related to a Post article from Sunday which dwells on last year's $6 billion offer from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). The Post pointed out Groupon shares have been halved since IPO-ing last November, though Groupon retains a market cap still north of what Google offered. Since the refusal, Google and others have launched their own daily-deal sites.

An Evercore Partners analyst noted Google's offer was issued when Groupon was a much smaller company. Currently, Groupon's stock trades at about half the multiple it was at when Google made its bid. Since then, quarterly revs have tripled.

Another point made revolves around expiration of Groupon's lock-up period in June, with the potential for a massive selloff by shareholders. Evercore said not to worry as CEO Andrew Mason and other execs have already alleviated hundreds of millions of obligations with private funding and probably wouldn't want to sell shares at such a low price. Evercore has a $15 price target on Groupon.

Also heard on the Street Monday morning, research firm B. Riley upgraded Groupon from Sell to Neutral earlier.

Investors will be keeping an eye on Groupon with the imminent IPO of Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) expected to happen next week.


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