My Story, Groupon shares soar in early trading

Daily-deals provider Groupon has gone public, and already, its shares are soaring.

Yesterday, reports claimed Groupon was going public today at $20 per share. The company later confirmed that its offering price would be $20, but when the Nasdaq opened this morning, its shares were not being offered.

In a statement to CNET, a company spokesperson said Groupon's shares would be offered sometime today, but the spokesperson was "not sure precisely what time the first trade will be."

Soon after that statement was sent to CNET, the company's shares went public. As of this writing, Groupon is trading up to $29.20, representing a 46 percent gain on its opening price.

"Today's a significant step in Groupon's journey, but it's not the finish line," a company spokesperson told CNET. "We're committed to innovating ways to change local retail for consumers and local businesses. It's great to pause and recognize what we've accomplished, but we're focused on building a long-term business that really changes people's expectations of local commerce."

Groupon has taken a long road to finally arrive at Wall Street. After announcing its IPO intentions earlier this year, the company was hit hard by the Securities and Exchange Commission over incorrect accounting practices that artificially inflated its revenue figures. After revising its revenue down, Groupon was then the victim of a difficult IPO market that caused many companies to balk at offering shares until the market turned around.

But Groupon has decided to buck that trend and try its luck with its IPO. And at $20 per share, the company is going off notably higher than the expected range of $16 to $18 it recently mentioned in its SEC papers. At the $20 mark, Groupon is valued at $12.7 billion.

That said, there is more than meets the eye with Groupon's offering. The company currently has about 637 million shares outstanding, but is only expected to offer 35 million. By doing so, the company's float--a measure of the difference between outstanding and restricted shares--is extremely small. That is significant. Typically, stocks with smaller floats are more volatile, and are thus more likely to be impacted by the changing market.

The small float also provides Groupon with more opportunities to raise cash through secondary offerings. LinkedIn, which went public earlier this year, is already planning a secondary offering that would raise another $100 million by selling more shares to stockholders.

Speaking of LinkedIn, Groupon can only hope to see the kind of success the professional social network did on its first day of trading in May. LinkedIn opened at $45 per share and continued to gain ground until hitting $122.70. However, over the last several months, LinkedIn's shares have dropped down to $78.36.

Update at 8:01 a.m. PT
to include Groupon IPO information.