Groupon Slumps, Endangering Upcoming IPOs

After a successful initial public offering by Groupon, technology companies like Angie’s List and Yelp have piled into a perceived window for them to go public. That window appears to have solidly closed, according to The New York Times, as Groupon suffers from the slump characteristic of most other offerings from earlier this year.

When Groupon went public in early November, the company gave itself a higher than expected $20-per-share price. After spiking above $27 per share on its first day, the company seemed to justify its valuation, hovering just under $25 per share for most of two weeks.

But on the Monday before Thanksgiving, a short spike quickly dropped back below recent weeks’ average price over recent weeks. After a slight decline on Tuesday, Groupon watched its stock plummet on Wednesday, falling back to its IPO price before falling well past that level over the holiday.

At 9:51 a.m. on Monday, November 28, Groupon was valued at $17.51 per share, actually up substantially from its lowest point of $16.30 per share on Friday.

According to the Times, some of the year’s most notable offerings – including Demand Media, Groupon, LinkedIn, Pandora, Renren and Yandex – stood at an average price of barely 74 percent of their initial offering price as of Monday morning. Discounting the more successful LinkedIn, that number drops below 50 percent.

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