UPDATED 13:53 EDT / NOVEMBER 02 2011

Groupon Sets the Date for an IPO on Friday

Daily deal site Groupon will reportedly price its IPO on Thursday, and begin NASDAQ trading as soon as this Friday.

According to All Things Digital, although the financial market is still not stable, the group buying site will continue its IPO efforts and will officially go public by the end of this week. Groupon stock will be traded in the U.S. NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol GRPN.

Groupon and its investment bankers Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have not yet decided whether to raise the stock of the final issue price.  According to the current value of $540 million issue of stock valuations, Groupon’s market value would evaluated at $11.4 billion.

Groupon had hoped to get $16-$18 per share at an issue price of 30 million shares, and is expected to raise about $480 million to $540 million with an IPO.

As exciting as this may be for Groupon and its investors, the road to an IPO has been a rather rough one.  Groupon’s listing has hurdled administrative chaos, uncertainty and claims of accounting fraud amongst other negative developments. The company filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission with an estimated value of $750 million in July of this year.

Groupon’s pricing strategy can be seen as a signal that many U.S. companies may postpone the IPO to start listings in the fourth quarter.  In fact, the US IPO market has been all but shut down since July, as enterprises are worried about the financial market’s volatility.  But the IPO market has shown signs of recovery in October when three new companies were listed, and this week there are four companies waiting to be listed in the market.

Although facing fierce criticism, Groupon still tries to move forward, and now faces the toughest test to come: the public shareholders.


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