Coupons.com Files For $100M IPO On The NYSE, Trading As Coup

The march of the 2014 initial public offerings commences, with the latest one of the oldest brands on the internet. Coupons.com has just filed S-1 papers with the SEC for an IPO on the NYSE, trading under the name COUP, and raising $100 million.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., Allen & Company LLC, BofA Merrill Lynch and RBC Capital Markets are listed as the underwriters on the filing.

The news comes a day after Box reportedly filed a “secret” IPO. Coupons.com may elect to use a similar route to keep from disclosing certain aspects of its business, it notes. “We are an ‘emerging growth company’ as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings,” it notes.

Coupons.com’s IPO filing was long anticipated, most recently with Paul Sloan jumping from his position as editor-in-chief at CNET to take up head of communications to lead the effort.

As one of the earlier movers in the online coupons space, Coupons.com is also one of the biggest. It notes in the IPO that in the first nine months of 2013, its sales were generated from some 940 million transactions on its site. Those included customers picking up digital coupons and also redeeming codes over its platform. That figure is up 49% over a year ago.

Coupons.com says that today its platform includes more than 700 consumer packaged goods companies, representing over 2,000 brands, and retailers covering some 58,000 physical stores in North America. It had 17 million monthly unique visitors on average across Coupons.com and affiliated sites over 2013 and visited the sites of its CPGs, retailers and publishers. Its mobile apps have been downloaded some 7 million times.

First established as a site for newspaper coupons, more recently the company has been trying to convert its brand recognition into a business fit for a more social and mobile age. In December Coupons.com acquired Yub for $30 million to add loyalty networks to its service and position itself as a better bridge between offline and online commerce. In March 2013, it acquired KitchMe, a Pinterest-like recipe service.

Founded in 1998, Coupons.com has raised some $277 million in venture funding but it is a loss-making business. During the nine months ended September 30, 2013, the company says, it generated revenues of $115.3 million, growing 51% compared to the same period in 2012 but at a net loss of $12.8 million. That net loss was a decrease of 75% over the same period in 2012, the company says.

The full-year figures for the year before show that Coupons.com is improving its structure. In 2012, sales were $112.1 million, 23% up versus 2011, but with a net loss of $59.2 million, up 158% (!) over 2011.

Sill, coupons are big business, potentially. Coupons.com says that in 2012, 305 billion total coupons were distributed, “representing an aggregate discount value of $467 billion, with 2.9 billion redeemed representing an aggregate discount value of $3.7 billion,” citing stats from NCH Marketing Services.

Photo: Flickr

View the Original article

Zynga Drops 12% In Regular Trading On External Warnings About Its Coming Earnings

Social gaming firm Zynga today plunged 12 percent in regular trading, following a warning by Sterne Agee’s Arvind Bhatia, which indicated that the market’s fourth-quarter consensus may be too optimistic. Shares fell by 49 cents to end the day at $3.54.

Also today, UBS lowered its rating on Zynga’s stock from hold to sell, indicating deteriorating confidence in the company’s business fundamentals. Summing simply: Zynga got wrecked today as outside investors threw shade all over it.

Zynga has had a textbook rough time as a public technology company, with an IPO followed by a dramatic rise in its value, followed by a precipitous decline, and now years in the doldrums.

According to BusinessWeek’s summation, investors expect Zynga to lose 4 cents per share on revenue of $183 million in the fourth quarter. If those projections are too strong, you begin to wonder what upside the company may have. A quick look at past earnings, and the loss expected, is on the back of decreased year-over-year revenues.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, Zynga had revenue of $331 million.

Zynga has not been quiet. The company has a new CEO and changed its leadership structure in late 2013 to respond to its deteriorating condition. Still, it isn’t idle speculation to ask if those changes were less than what was required, and perhaps already over the event horizon.

The decline puts Zynga in an ironic position to excel: If it manages to merely meet the market’s consensus when it reports earnings, it could enjoy a firm bounce.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

View the Original article

Microsoft Exec Charged With Insider Trading, SEC Alleges 400K In Illegal Gains

Reality is always better than fiction. Today the Securities and Exchange Commission charged a — now former — Microsoft “senior manager” with insider trading. The employee, Brian Jorgenson, is accused of working with a friend to trade Microsoft stock and shares of its partners ahead of news such as earnings, generating almost $400,000 in profits over the course of the partnership that began in April of 2012. The pair had intended to use the spoils from their venture to start a hedge fund, according to the SEC.

Protip: If you are going to abuse your job’s access to information to grind out illegal profits with a friend in hopes of building up a big enough stack so that you can open a hedge fund, don’t get caught. You look silly. Not to mention like a bastard. Still, making a cool $393,125 in a year and a half ain’t no small kaboodle, so you have to give Jorgenson and his co-conspirator Sean Stokke props for pulling of the scheme, at least financially. Bastards.

Here’s how it worked: Microsoft planned to invest $300 million into Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader project. Jorgenson found out, passed the information along to Stokke, who bought, according to the SEC, “$14,000 worth of call options on Barnes & Noble common stock.” Microsoft announced the deal, and bounced Barnes & Noble’s stock up about 50%. Profit to the pair? About $185,000. Imagine what they could have made if they already had that hedge fund money they wanted to raise. 

The SEC goes on to note two other cases, including trading before a Microsoft earnings announcements. According to ZDNet, Microsoft fired Jorgenson, and helped the SEC in its investigation. Here are the formal charges:
Jorgenson and Stokke are charged with violating Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, both directly and pursuant to 20(d) of the Exchange Act.  

The SEC seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus prejudgment interest, and financial penalties against Jorgenson and Stokke as well as an officer-and-director bar against Jorgenson.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

View the Original article