Groupon Inc chairman Eric Lefkofsky said he expected the money-losing daily-coupon provider, which filed on Thursday to sell shares to the public, to be “wildly profitable.”
Lefkofsky, who co-founded Groupon and is its biggest shareholder, made the comments on Friday in response to questions about businesses that he previously ran or founded. These include Starbelly.com, InnerWorkings Inc and Echo Global Logistics Inc.
“I’m going to be in technology for a long time,” Lefkofsky said. “I’m going to start a lot of companies. These are not sham companies. These are great businesses. InnerWorkings is profitable. Echo is profitable. Groupon is going to be wildly profitable.”
Online-coupon pioneer Groupon said last week it aims to raise US$750 million in an initial public offering (IPO). While sales at the Chicago-based company surged more than 14-fold to US$644.7 million last year, Groupon has also amassed US$540.2 million in operating losses since its founding in 2008 and its costs are rising faster than revenue.
Lefkofsky in 2001 founded printing-service provider InnerWorkings, which went public in 2006. He also co-founded Echo Global Logistics, a shipping-technology firm, in 2005. That company held its IPO in 2009.
Lefkofsky helped found Starbelly.com, an online promotional-merchandise seller, in 1999 and sold it a year later to Ha-Lo Industries Inc for US$240 million. Ha-Lo filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors in July 2001 after writing down the acquisition.
Before Starbelly.com, Lefkofsky and his business partner Brad Keywell bought children’s apparel company Brandon Apparel Group. It later faltered, Lefkofsky said in his blog.
Groupon has surged in the past year as consumers in more than 500 markets worldwide flock to daily discounts of up to 90 percent at hotels, restaurants and nail salons. Its success has inspired more than 480 imitators.
“Groupon is a huge business,” Lefkofsky said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day