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Technology Stocks : Groupon, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (95)	8/26/2011 2:09:28 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	1 Recommendation Respond to of 480

Working the edges. . . Groupon Skirts, But Doesn’t Flout, SEC Rules By Shira Ovide Wall Street Journal August 26, 2011, 12:20 PM ET Two of Groupon’s founders have law degrees from the University of Michigan. So perhaps it’s fitting that the company seems to have done a clever bit of lawyering to tiptoe around rules that prohibit companies from touting themselves ahead of IPOs. Last night, our corporate cousin Kara Swisher at All Things D published what she appropriately described as a “pugnacious” email memo sent to Groupon employees from CEO Andrew Mason. The memo defended the company from what Mason said were laugh-out-loud ridiculous news stories speculating Groupon is a rickety business that is destined for the slaughterhouse. The memo is a good read and worth checking out. Here is one characteristic nugget: “The degree to which we’re getting the [expletive] kicked out of us in the press had finally crossed the threshold from ‘annoying’ to ‘hilarious.’… I’ll summarize my excitement with four points: 1) Growth in our core business is strong 2) Our investments in the future — businesses like Getaways & NOW — look great, 3) We are pulling away from competition, and 4) We’ve built a great team that I would pit against anyone. In other words, all the stuff that one would want to look good? It looks good.” Now, federal securities rules are very rigid. Once a company files to go public, neither the company nor its executives can do anything seen as possibly whetting investors’ appetite for the IPO. Talking about how “excited” you are about the company — and running through details of how the company is on strong financial footing — generally counts in the category of priming the IPO pump. The rules may be silly — as Henry Blodget of Business Insider writes– but the rules are the rules. Groupon has already run afoul of the securities “quiet period” rules when co-founder Eric Lefkofsky was quoted in Bloomberg News saying Groupon “was going to be wildly profitable.” Seems innocent enough, but those statements set off alarms at the Securities and Exchange Commission. So isn’t Mason’s employee memo the equivalent of Lefkofky’s naughty “wildly profitable” statement? Not so fast. Mason’s email was intended as a note to employees — an audience that likely insulates Groupon from charges of priming the IPO pump with bullish remarks on its business. “The SEC appreciates that a company in the quiet period still needs to communicate with its employees,” said Andrew Pitts, a partner and securities-law expert with Cravath, Swaine & Moore. “That doesn’t mean you get a free pass,” he said. One big “but” here, a s Blodget also writes: Mason’s “internal” memo clearly was written to be seen by the public and widely circulated. That gives Groupon a clever wink-and-nod at the federal securities rules. What quiet period violation? This memo is for employees! (Even though in five minutes we expect and hope it will pop up in news outlets from Silicon Valley to Switzerland.) Still, if Mason published his memo publicly, or made similar statements to a journalist as his colleague Lefkofsky did — or as the Google founders did in 2004 with an infamous Playboy magazine interview — the SEC might have looked askance, Pitts said. “I don’t think this would be their Playboy,” Pitts said. blogs.wsj.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (95)	8/26/2011 9:16:46 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 480

Groupon traffic drops by half while LivingSocial surges By Rachel King ZDNet August 26, 2011, 3:43pm PDT Summary: Groupon’s website isn’t exactly seeing the same amount of traffic it used to as its rival continues to gain momentum. As Groupon continues with its planned IPO and goal to raise $750 million, it’s probably going to need a lot of help based on these new traffic numbers. Online intelligence firm Experian Hitwise is reporting that Groupon’s weekly U.S. traffic rates have dropped off by almost 50 percent last week since its peak during the second week of June 2011. Although Hitwise acknowledges that figure represents only web-based traffic but not include mobile or apps traffic. However, based on the same rules above (web-based only in the U.S.), domestic visits to Groupon’s chief competitor LivingSocial has surged by 27 percent. On top of all of this, overall visits in the U.S. to daily deal and respective aggregation sites were down by 25 percent. So why the big disparity between Groupon and LivingSocial? Even Hitwise can’t pinpoint an exact reason. Yes, a survey from PriceGrabber revealed that approximately 52 percent of American consumers are overwhelmed by the amount of daily deal emails they receive. But that still might not entirely explain why one daily deal site continues to grow and the other does not. As for Groupon, it could be flailing in reputation in the face of consumers amidst reports of unusual accounting schemes, costing business owners more money than they receive in return, and even bleeding money itself. There’s also a big difference in the types of deals that LivingSocial and Groupon offer. The former usually publishes deals that have a little more value and respect. Groupon tends to send out anything it can get. Seriously, who needs a daily deal for Domino’s Pizza? It’s already a bargain (if you want to eat it). No wonder Groupon is losing money and traffic when it wastes its time on these kinds of promotions. zdnet.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (95)	8/30/2011 10:06:02 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Respond to of 480

Another Groupon competitor shuts down its daily deals experiment: Yelp reportedly giving up on its daily-deals effort Los Angeles Times August 29, 2011 \| 7:19 pm Yelp isn't quite pulling a Facebook, but it is largely pulling out of the daily deals game -- a market led by companies such as GroupOn and LivingSocial, according to a report. Facebook killed off its Deals service Friday after launching it just four months ago in Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Dallas; San Diego; and San Francisco. Yelp won't scrap working with businesses altogether, but its Yelp Deals daily-deal effort is being disbanded, Vince Sollitto, a Yelp spokesman told Bloomberg. "Rather than offer more and more deals of inherently declining quality to more and more folks over time, we want to make sure we're only providing good, quality opportunities," Sollitto said. "While we think the deals business is a good one, it has never been a core focus of our offering." Sollitto told Bloomberg that it will cut half of the 30-person staff dedicated to sales on Yelp Deals. The remaining 15 employees will move to other parts of Yelp's workforce, the report said. Bloomberg reported that in July alone, about 38 daily-deal sites closed while 36 others opened. Both Groupon and LivingSocial are prepping themselves for potential IPOs. latimesblogs.latimes.com

To: stockman_scott who wrote (95)	8/31/2011 7:50:26 AM
From: Glenn Petersen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 480

Groupon's PR Boss Suddenly Quit After Just Two Months On The Job – Here's Why Nicholas Carlson Business Insider Aug. 30, 2011, 6:24 PM The vice president of global communications at Groupon has left the company after just two months on the job. According to a source familiar with one view of the situation, Bradford Williams left due to the way the company has responded to its critics during the "quiet period" ahead of its inital public offering. Williams himself declined to comment other than to say: "We mutually decided it wasn't a fit." A Groupon spokesperson confirmed that they "mutually agreed to part ways." In the many weeks since it filed papers with the SEC outlining its financials and announcing its intention to go public, Groupon has taken a beating in the press. First, critics complained about Groupon's unconventional accounting metrics, which seemed to count marketing spending as a capital cost. Then, we pointed out that Groupon is running low on cash. Last week, Groupon CEO and cofounder Andrew Mason wrote a memo to employees responding to the company's outside critics point-by-point. In what felt like an orchestrated plant, t he memo found its way online. This leaked memo may have violated SEC's "quiet period" rules, which are intended to prevent pump-and-dump scams. According to a source familiar with the situation, Mason's decision to write and send this memo is indicative of the kind of decision-making at Groupon that led Williams to walk away. Says a source: "Andrew and [Williams] didn't agree on a lot – [they had] different views on lots of things." "Do the math. [Williams] walked out of there on last Wednesday. The first thing [Mason] did was send out that memo – which [Williams] would have advised strenuously against." A spokesperson at a third-party public relations firm representing Groupon said he did not to know whether or not Williams was still with the company. We'd like to thank Owen Thomas and Kara Swisher for their tweets that first tipped us to this story. http://www.businessinsider.com/groupons-pr-boss-quit-right-before-andrew-mason-sent-out-that-controversial-memo-last-week-2011-8?op=1