5 Best Regional Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now

5 Best Regional Bank Stocks To Watch Right Now: Groupon Inc (GRPN)

Groupon, Inc. (Groupon) is a local e-commerce marketplace that connects merchants to consumers by offering goods and services at a discount. Each day the Company e-mails its subscribers discounted offers for goods and services that are targeted by location and personal preferences. Consumers also access its deals directly through its Websites and mobile applications. The Company operates in two segments: North America, which represents the United States and Canada; and International, which represents the rest of its global operations. Customers purchase Groupons from the Company and redeem them with its merchants. As of September 30, 2011, the Company featured deals from over 190,000 merchants worldwide across over 190 categories of goods and services. Groupon primarily addresses the worldwide local commerce markets in the leisure, recreation, foodservice and retail sectors. In February 2012, the Company announced the launch of Groupon Thailand. In September 2012, it acqui red Savored.

In May 2010, the Company acquired CityDeal Europe GmbH (CityDeal). In August 2010, the Company acquired Qpod.inc (Qpod). In November 2010, the Company acquired Ludic Labs, Inc., a company that designs and develops local marketing services. During the year ended December 31, 2010, the Company acquired Mobly, Inc. In February 2011, the Company launched Deal Channels, which aggregates daily deals from the same category.

The Company distributes a featured daily deal by e-mail on behalf of local merchants to subscribers. It offers daily deals from more than 40 national merchants, including Bath & Body Works, The Body Shop, Hyatt Regency, InterContinental Hotels, Lions Gate, Redbox, Shutterfly and Zipcar across subsets of the North American market. Daily deals that do not appear as a featured daily deal appear as Deals Nearby. Each Deal Nearby is summarized in fewer than 20 words next to the featured daily deal. Deals Nearb! y often extends bey ond the subscriber's closest market or buying preferences.

National merchants also have used the Companys marketplace as an alternative to traditional marketing and brand advertising. On August 19, 2010, the Company e-mailed and posted a Groupon daily deal offering $50 of apparel at Gap for $25 to 9.2 million subscribers across 85 markets in North America. It sold approximately 433,000 Groupons in 24 hours. Of the consumers who purchased Groupons, approximately 200,000 were new subscribers. As of September 30, 2011, it had 142.9 million subscribers to its daily e-mails.

Groupon NOW is a deal initiated by a merchant on demand and offered instantly to subscribers through mobile devices and its Website. Subsequent to the year ended December 31, 2010, the Company launched Groupon NOW in 25 North American markets. Deal Channels aggregate daily deals from the same category and are accessible through its Website and through e-mail alerts that subscribe rs sign up to receive. It offers Deal Channels in home and garden and event tickets and travel. Merchants can register their deals to be included in a Deal Channel. Subscribers can use Deal Channels to focus on deals that are of interest to them.

Self-Service Deals allows the Companys merchants to use a self-service platform to create and launch deals at their discretion. The use of the platform is free and allows merchants to establish a permanent e-commerce presence on Groupon that can be visited and followed by subscribers. The Company receives a portion of the purchase price from deals sold through Self-Service Deals based on the extent to which it marketed the deal. In December 2010, it launched Self-Service Deals in selected North American markets.

Groupon Goods enables consumers to purchase vouchers for products directly from its Website. The Company e-mails deals for Groupon Goods weekly to a targeted subscriber base. The Company offers deals for a variety of product categories! , includi! ng electronics, home and garden and toys. In September 2011, the Company launched Groupon Goods in select North American and International markets.

Groupon Rewards enables consumers to unlock special Groupon deals from local merchants through repeat visits. Consumers earn reward points at participating merchants by paying with the credit or debit card they have registered with the Company. Merchants set the amount the consumer must spend to unlock a reward deal, and once a consumer is eligible to unlock a deal, it automatically notifies them. The Company distributes its deals directly through several platforms: a daily e-mail, its Websites, its mobile applications and social networks.

In December 2010, the Company partnered with Redbox to offer a daily deal to their user base and it acquired over 200,000 new customers through that offer and in March 2011, it partnered with eBay to offer a daily deal to their user base and it acquired over 290,000 new customers through that offer. The featured daily deal e-mail contains one headline deal with a full-description of the deal and often contains links to More Great Deals Nearby, all of which are available within a subscriber's market.

Visitors are prompted to register as a subscriber when they first visit its Website and thereafter use the Website as a portal for featured daily deals, Deals Nearby, national deals, and where available, Deal Channels and Self-Service Deals. Consumers also access the Companys deals through its mobile applications, which are available on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows mobile operating systems. It launched its first mobile application in March 2010. The Company publishes its daily deals through various social networks and its notifications are adapted to the particular format of each of these social networking platforms.

Groupon competes with Google, Micr osoft, Eversave, BuyWithMe and LivingSocial.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Andrew Tonner]!

  It's! been a wild ride for Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN  ) investors on the public markets. The company initially went public with about as much hype behind it as there ever has been, only to see that promise fade quickly. However, as its share price has reflected over the past few months, the company has gone a long way toward righting the ship and moving into a more stable future. In this video, Fool contributor Andrew Tonner breaks down the ongoing turnaround at the daily-deals monster and how, despite all the positivity, the company's shares still might be a tad too optimistic today.

• [By Brian Lund]

  jdlasica/flickrMarc Andreessen is bullish on Bitcoin. It's been a tough couple of weeks for Bitcoin. Hackers have had their way with three Bitcoin sites that hold customer funds, and one, for all intents and purposes, has gone out of business. Poloniex had $50,000 of Bitcoin stolen; Flexcoin reported $600,000 in theft; and Mt. Gox -- the first and at one time, the largest exchange -- reportedly had $400 million stolen, which caused it to cease business and declare bankruptcy. This turmoil has sent the former golden child of hipster investors plummeting from the nosebleed heights of $1,242 per coin to a low of $419. The virtual currency gods then poured salt into the wound when the Japanese government announced that it intended to regulate Bitcoin -- a move that foreshadows similar actions by regulators in North America and the European Union. The dark cloud hanging over the currency got a bit darker -- reminding us that though the currency is virtual, the people behind it are real -- when it was announced that Autumn Radtke, CEO of bitcoin exchange First Meta, committed suicide at the age of 28. So why hasn't Bitcoin failed once and for all? The answer doesn't have to do so much with what is happening now with the currency as it does with who is betting big on its success. Follow the Leaders: Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson Allow me to introduce you to two people who think! Bitcoin ! is just in its infancy, and whose opinions you should pay attention to: Marc Andreessen and Fred Wilson. You might recognize Andreessen as the co-creator of the first web browser -- Mosaic -- and co-founder of Netscape Communications, which was purchased by AOL (AOL) (publisher of DailyFinance) in 1999 for $4.2 billion. After that, he went on to form Andreessen Horowitz, one of the premier Silicon Valley venture capital firms, which was an early investor in such obscure start-ups as Facebook (FB), Twitter (TWTR), Groupon (GRPN) and Zynga (ZNGA). You might not recognize Fred Wil

• [By John Kell]

  Among the companies with shares expected to actively trade in Friday’s session are Groupon Inc.(GRPN), Priceline.com Inc.(PCLN) andDish Network Corp.

source from Top Stocks To Buy For 2015:http://www.topstocksforum.com/5-best-regional-bank-stocks-to-watch-right-now.html