Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: stockman_scott who wrote (193)	11/11/2011 6:17:41 PM
From: Glenn Petersen	1 Recommendation Respond to of 480

Money - lots of money - continues to pour into the deal/coupon space. I remember filling books with S&H Green Stamps for my mother when I was a kid. When I was going through her things after her death four years ago, I expected to find a book half filled with stamps. Loot by Kent Bernhard, Jr. Portfolio.com Nov 10 2011 12:41pm EDT Coupons Have Been Very Good to WhaleShark Fresh off the successful initial public offering of Groupon, another, very different kind of coupon site has landed a whale of a round in funding. WhaleShark Media, which bills itself as the biggest collection of web sites for coupon hunters around the world, announced this morning it had raised $150 million from J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Institutional Venture Partners. That brings the total raised by the company since it launched in 2009 to a whopping $300 million, with funding also coming from Austin Ventures, Google Ventures and HomeAway CEO Brian Sharples. Asked what he planned to do with all that cash, WhaleShark founder and CEO Cotter Cunningham sounded almost like a user of one of the websites the company runs around the world. “We’re a company primarily built on acquisitions and we’re going to buy more stuff,” he said. Among the stuff WhaleShark has bought already are sites like RetailMeNot and VoucherCodes in the United Kingdom. So, an aggressive acquisition strategy, a lot of venture capital, and deals for consumers sounds like another knock-off of Groupon, the Chicago daily deal site that was last week at the center of the biggest tech IPO since Google’s in 2004. And there is some truth to the comparison, in that both companies look to save consumers money. But WhaleShark has a much simpler premise than Groupon or its biggest daily deal rival, LivingSocial. “Our coupons are much more traditional,” Cunningham, 49, and the former chief operating officer of Bankrate.com and entrepreneur-in-residence at Austin Ventures, said. “We’re taking the Sunday circular and digitizing it and putting it online. We compete with companies like Savings.com, CouponCabin.com.” And there are other differences between WhaleShark and Groupon. WhaleShark, with about $70 million in annual revenue, is profitable, Cunningham said. Groupon, famously, is not. “We’ve been very disciplined in our growth,” Cunningham said. With such a large pile of cash raised, nice revenue, profitability and an IPO market that’s suddenly heating up largely thanks to Groupon’s offering, you’d think going public would be much on Cunningham’s mind. But he said he’s in no hurry. Going public is at least a year away. “It’s not something we talk about a ton,” he said. “”We’re able to focus sort of entirely on growing our business.” Read more: http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/money-hunt/2011/11/10/whaleshark-media-lands-one-hundred-fifty-million-from-jp-morgan-institutional-venture-partners#ixzz1dRQ9VG66