Coupons.com files to raise US$100M in US initial public offering; yet-to-be unprofitable website generates revenue when customers download coupons for redemption

Cindy Allen

February 3, 2014 (Bloomberg LP) – Coupons.com Inc., which took coupon clipping from newspapers to the Web in 1998, filed to raise $100 million in a U.S. initial public offering.

The figure is a placeholder used to calculate fees and may change. Coupons.com plans to use the proceeds for marketing and capital expenditures, according to a regulatory filing today.

The unprofitable website generates revenue when a consumer downloads a coupon for redemption. Sales rose to $115 million in the nine months through September, from $76 million a year earlier, the filing shows.

Coupons.com is looking to tap public markets as shares of another online coupon provider, RetailMeNot Inc., are up 69 percent since its debut in July, and group discount website Groupon Inc. is up 89 percent over the past year. Ebates Shopping.com Inc. is also seeking an IPO in 2014, people familiar with the matter have said.

Passport Capital LLC, the $3.2 billion hedge-fund firm run by John Burbank, holds a 23 percent stake in Coupons.com, while T. Rowe Price Group Inc. owns 12 percent, the filing shows. A $200 million investment from institutional investors in 2011 valued the Mountain View, California-based company at $1 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Allen & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Royal Bank of Canada are managing the offering.

--Editors: Mohammed Hadi, Elizabeth Wollman

To contact the reporter on this story: Leslie Picker in New York at lpicker2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mohammed Hadi at mhadi1@bloomberg.net

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