IPO
Huge, sprawling article on Business Insider about Groupon since the early beginnings. It’s telling when an article about the big article is 3 pages long. Normally we would recommend reading the summary for conciseness – and because the day only has 24h – but the big article is a keeper. They got almost all of it right, except for the culture change part. It is more important, and far more disruptive, than they make it seem.
Groupon’s IPO filing has given it a “financial high profile” that it’s probably regretting. So many people have been poring over its numbers and criticizing the business model quite vocally that it may even cool off some of the excitement. Why should we care? Because once you ignore the IPO-hype noise, the underlying criticism is, for once, based on analysis of the business model via its reported numbers. It’s still imperfect, but it’s better than the guesswork of a few months ago.
Groupon’s IPO filing is finally here, and the revenues growth curve is staggering. The company makes no money and doesn’t expect to make any so soon (it’s expanding extremely fast). There are plenty of doubts about the sustainability of its business model, competition and – much more importantly – margin of safety, especially given the preliminary level of disclosure and a few corporate governance quirks such as a dual-class share structure and a preference for “earnings before all the bad stuff” metrics. Yet it’s a business that one almost has to follow for insights on how these companies can impact anything from traditional retailing to data analytics. We suggest previous posts in Buysiders.com for background.
LinkedIn’s IPO had staggering numbers today, and we highlight many stories discussing it – including one that highlights potential conflicts of interest between sellers and intermediaries in the IPO process.
The Economist yesterday ran a story on the frothiness of the Brazilian markets, especially for Private Equity and Hedge funds. It’s great that the country has seen a wave of IPOs and that more sectors of the economy are now represented in the exchanges. Increasing Private Equity investments and a healthy market providing an exit strategy could mean that, over time, more interesting companies and business models come to the market. But as we’ve argued in our latest report, an excerpt of which we include in this post, some caution is due.
Quick look at the business and links for follow-up study on Verisk Analytics, a recently-IPO’d insurance data provider owned in part by Berkshire Hathaway.
Read more about Buffett’s newest “purchase”: Verisk Analytics
