LivingSocial, the second-largest daily coupon site, is close to hiring JPMorgan Chase & Co, Bank of America Corp and Deutsche Bank AG to manage its initial public offering (IPO), a person with knowledge of the talks said.
The Washington-based startup is expected to make a formal appointment in the next three weeks, though negotiations with any of the banks could fall through, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
LivingSocial is seeking to raise about US$1 billion in an IPO this year, a person familiar with the matter said last week. It aims to capitalize on surging demand for shares of Internet companies after LinkedIn Corp, Yandex NV and Pandora Media Inc have each gained at least 20 percent since raising money in public markets this year. Groupon Inc, the leader in delivering daily coupons, filed on June 2 for a US$750 million IPO.
Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc are not contenders to handle LivingSocial’s share sale because of their involvement in Groupon’s IPO, said the person familiar with the decision.
CNBC reported earlier on -Friday that LivingSocial had picked JPMorgan, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank as underwriters.
LivingSocial, led by co-founder Tim O’Shaughnessy, raised US$400 million in April, valuing the company at US$3.5 billion, two people said at the time. The company will generate US$1 billion in revenue this year, they said.
The company is tripling its workforce to 1,800 this year and plans to more than double the cities where it offers deals to 300, O’Shaughnessy said in an interview in December last year. Groupon has more than 7,000 employees and sells coupons in more than 500 cities.
LivingSocial had 24 percent of online daily deal revenue in top North American markets in May, according to a study released last month by Yipit. It gained 4 -percentage points from a month earlier, while Groupon lost 4 points, to 48 percent.
The companies deliver daily discounts on restaurants, hotels, events and other goods and services. The daily-deal market may generate US$3.9 billion in US sales in 2015, compared with US$873 million last year, according to research firm BIA/Kelsey in Chantilly, Virginia.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts