Actually I read the press as Groupon is having a hard time selling seats on the train. Not that I know anything of course. The analysis that the small float is an attempt to keep the per-share price high(er) and the valuation somewhere up from their last round, is spot on.
If I were a betting person I'd give them 50/50 odds that they can't get the offering fully subscribed even with Goldman's using its deep pockets to cover unsold shares.
These articles about the Groupon IPO all seem to have the same feel, reporting some chicanery that doesn't definitively suggest that the stock is a turd, but do suggest that the financeers behind this business are treating the entire thing as an exercise in cashing out quickly.
I strongly suspect that investment bankers are playing Pump'n'Dump Bingo with Groupon, which is a little like Buzzword Bingo: Each player throws $10,000 in the pot and gets a bingo card. The squares have random stock promotion events on them, like "restates earnings," "cancels road show" or "Cxx resigns." The first person who gets five in a row collects the pot.
Right now, the players are checking their cards for "Low float."
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 15.1 ms ] threadGroupon is just a slow-motion train wreck (which everyone still seems to want to get a ride on, oddly).
If I were a betting person I'd give them 50/50 odds that they can't get the offering fully subscribed even with Goldman's using its deep pockets to cover unsold shares.
I strongly suspect that investment bankers are playing Pump'n'Dump Bingo with Groupon, which is a little like Buzzword Bingo: Each player throws $10,000 in the pot and gets a bingo card. The squares have random stock promotion events on them, like "restates earnings," "cancels road show" or "Cxx resigns." The first person who gets five in a row collects the pot.
Right now, the players are checking their cards for "Low float."