Boston, MA 11/11/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The management of Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) announced that the acquisition of Living Social’s TicketMonster for an amount of $260 million would be paid in the form of $100 million in cash and approximately $160 million in the form of Class A common stock.
The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Eric Lefkofsky said that the management of the company is very excited that they would be announcing that the company would be signing an agreement in order to acquire Ticket Monster which is considered to be one of the successful mobile commerce businesses in the largest markets of the world. This agreement would be serving as the corner stone of the Asian business of the company bringing out a larger scale e commerce expertise in the entire region.
Despite of being an arch rival of Groupon stock holders, the deal between Groupon and Living Social would prove to be a success and the deal would close earlier of next year. Earlier, Living Social acquired Ticket Monster for an undisclosed amount in the year 2011 and since then, it has been trying to sell it since last year. Talking about Ticker Monster, around $800 million annualized billings are acquired by the company. With the help of this deal, Ticket Monster would be receiving approximately 10% of the entire revenue.
Long time back, the Chief Executive Officer of Living Social, Tim O’Shaughnessy regarded Ticker Monster as a non core asset as they were not able to match the strategic focus of the company. The Chief Executive Officer also explained that this sale would enable Living Social to invest more in its market place and the development of the product which would be operating in the United States of America and also other regions.
Moreover, this acquisition would make Groupon the second largest market in the South Korea.
