Groupon Files IPO

Groupon filed its much-anticipated IPO Thursday afternoon with the SEC and is seeking to raise up to $750 million.

The daily deal website plans to list its shares under the ticker symbol "GRPN," although they didn't disclose which exchange they plan to list on.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse were tapped to lead the hot deal.

In a letter to potential stockholders, CEO Andrew Mason said the company aggressively invests in growth and is always reinventing themselves. Mason also said the company doesn't measures themselves in conventional way. He said there are three main financial metrics that they track closely: "First, we track gross profit, which we believe is the best proxy for the value we're creating. Second, we measure free cash flow—there is no better metric for long-term financial stability. Finally, we use a third metric to measure our financial performance—Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income, or Adjusted CSOI. This metric is our consolidated segment operating income before our new subscriber acquisition costs and certain non-cash charges; we think of it as our operating profitability before marketing costs incurred for long-term growth."

Started in November 2008, Groupon increased revenue from $3.3 million in the second quarter of 2009 to $644.7 million in the first quarter of 2011. Others key stats were as followed:

• Net loss in first quarter of 2011 was $146.48 million, versus profit of $8.028 million in first quarter of 2010.
  
  
• We expanded from five North American markets as of June 30, 2009 to 175 North American markets and 43 countries as of March 31, 2011.
  
  
• We increased our subscriber base from 152,203 as of June 30, 2009 to 83.1 million as of March 31, 2011.
  
  
• We increased the number of merchants featured in our marketplace from 212 in the second quarter of 2009 to 56,781 in the first quarter of 2011.
  
  
• We sold 116,231 Groupons in the second quarter of 2009 compared to 28.1 million Groupons in the first quarter of 2011.
  
  
• We grew from 37 employees as of June 30, 2009 to 7,107 employees as of March 31, 2011.
  
  
• In 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, we generated gross profit of $280.0 million and $270.0 million, respectively.
  
  
• In 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, we generated free cash flow of $72.2 million and $7.0 million, respectively.
  
  
• The number of shares of our Class A common stock that will be outstanding after this offering is based on 296,140,145 shares outstanding at March 31, 2011.

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