Most couponers have experience saving money with Coupons.com. But starting next year, you may be able to make money from the site as well.
That’s if you decide to become part owner of the company.
Bloomberg is reporting that the printable coupon site is planning to go public in 2014. Coupons.com has reportedly chosen Goldman Sachs to lead an IPO. Neither Coupons.com nor Goldman Sachs would comment on the report.
If it happens, though, Coupons.com’s IPO would follow similar offers by other online coupon sites. RetailMeNot went public in July, and Bloomberg also reports that Ebates plans to offer its own IPO next year.
And there’s good money to be made in coupons. RetailMeNot’s stock debuted at $21 per share, peaked at nearly twice that, and is now sitting pretty at about $26 – representing a roughly 25% return on investment for those who bought shares.
But then there’s Groupon. The daily deals site has not been nearly as lucrative for its investors, who’ve watched the value of their shares slide over the past two years to about half what they once were, after the company’s much-ballyhooed IPO went bust.
Coupons.com would presumably like to think of itself as more of an established coupon site like RetailMeNot, and less of a flash in the pan like Groupon. The company has been around since 1998, after all, and survived the first dotcom bubble.
If we’re approaching a second dotcom bubble as some have predicted, Coupons.com appears well positioned to survive this one as well. According to the most recent earnings figures the company has made public, Coupons.com had revenue of more than $91 million in 2011. And with competitors like Coupon Network falling away, Coupons.com remains the leading printable coupon website by far.
So what would a Coupons.com IPO mean for you? It would help the company raise a whole lot of money, which it could use to hire more staff, expand its services and offer more coupons to meet increasing demand. And if you decide to buy into the IPO, you could own a piece of the company as well, giving you a stake in its success.
That way, in theory, the more Coupons.com coupons you print and use, the better the company does, and the more your stock is worth. Coupons that not only save you money, but make you money – now that’s a win-win. For both you, and Coupons.com.
