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To be fair, the entire stock market has slumped in recent days: The NASDAQ composite index is now down 8.16 percent from where it was a week and a half ago, and the Dow Jones Industrial Index went down by 7.37 percent during that same period. But Groupon’s decline — by the end of Wednesday it was down 30 percent from Nov. 14 — outpaced both of those metrics significantly:

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As we’ve written before, monitoring the ups and downs of daily stock price changes is a bit of a horse race — and it’s also antithetical to the supposed purpose of the stock market, which is to allow companies to build toward long-term health and stability. But many folks in the tech and finance fields have been critical of Groupon’s valuation ever since it laid out specific plans to go public back in June, so there’s naturally buzz (and a healthy bit of schadenfreude) around its dramatic market cap decline. It’s important to remember, though, that while Groupon’s plummeting share price is certainly notable at the moment, now that it’s a publicly traded company it won’t be possible to truly judge whether it’s a stock market success or failure until it can be evaluated with a much longer lens.

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Groupon has set the final price for its impending initial public offering on Friday at $20 per share, AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher first reported, followed by other news outlets . That’s higher then the Chicago-based daily deal website’s previous estimated per share price of $16 to $18.

The rumored share price will give Groupon an overall market capitalization of $12.6 billion, well above the projections some Wall Street analysts have made of the company’s value. And as Scott Austin from the Wall Street Journal put it: the valuation is nearly half of Google’s $24.6 billion at IPO.

But of course, the beauty of the stock market is that ultimately the larger investing public decides how much a company is worth — regardless of what the experts say. Tomorrow could be a very interesting day for people in both the tech and financial spheres.

Groupon is only offering 34.5 million shares in its IPO, which is just 5.4 percent of the company’s 637.3 million shares outstanding. At $20 per share, the company will raise $680 million.

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Here are the facts: The pioneering daily deals website will trade under the ticker symbol “GRPN” on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Groupon has said in regulatory filings it will price its stock between $16 to $18 per share, giving the company a market capitalization of between $10.1 billion to $11.4 billion. Now, reports say that the actual IPO price may be a dollar or two higher than that range, given the strong demand for the stock.

Analysts say: Don’t believe the hype

But some analysts say that Groupon’s financial fundamentals don’t justify such a high valuation. Trefis, a website that calculates company valuations electronically, projects that Groupon is currently worth $7.9 billion, and should have a share price of $12.84 — nothing to sneeze at, of course, but well below both the official and rumored IPO targets. In order to be valued at $11.4 billion with an $18 share price, Trefis says, Groupon will need to grow its North American subscriber base at a much faster rate than it is currently on track to do.

Flesh-and-blood analysts are also skeptical of Groupon’s IPO valuation. Kenneth Sena, an analyst for investment bank Evercore Partners, has pegged Groupon’s central value at $9 billion; Henry Blodget, who had a (somewhat notorious) career as a Wall Street analyst before founding the Business Insider website, has placed Groupon’s central value at $7.5 billion.

First day jitters ahead

None of these estimates will sway Groupon from going public — or, for that matter, stop investors from participating enthusiastically in the IPO. No one denies that Groupon’s stock will get a lot of attention when it first goes public, especially in those first hours of trading. CNBC’s bombastic stock market commentator Jim Cramer said on his TV show last week:

“I think you’d be a fool not to try to get some shares in this deal and take advantage of it, so long as you sell on the spike in the first day. …I think you will get an initial pop, but after that you don’t want to be left holding the bag. So please, do get some shares in the deal. And then get out.”

Of course, Cramer’s record is far from impeccable when it comes to accurately predicting stock market activity. But lots of people out there do watch his show religiously and many of them do heed his advice — so it will be interesting to see just how high Groupon goes once it actually hits the public market.

One thing’s for sure: Groupon’s road to an IPO has been an interesting thing to track so far, and the company’s actual stock market debut promises to be an exciting event as well.

Feature image of Wall Street subway sign courtesy of Flickr user epicharmus.

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Since the company first filed its S-1 in June, Groupon has been roundly criticized for its seemingly shady accounting practices and that its early founders and investors have already cashed out billions of dollars worth of the company’s stock. CEO Andrew Mason was so irked by the negative press that he sent a long email to Groupon’s employees filled with talking points they could use to defend the company. Ironically, when that email was inevitably leaked to the press, it only attracted more criticism; the missive was seen as a violation of the SEC’s quiet period rules.

These issues coupled with the larger environment of economic unrest have fueled rumors that Groupon had put its stock market plans on ice. But Friday’s S-1 update — the third revision since June — shows that the company is still keen to go public. Despite Groupon’s swaggering reputation and Mason’s grumbling about haters, the company’s management is showing that underneath it all, it’s actually willing to make changes and respond to criticism. Specifically, the latest filing has a few notable tweaks: Groupon said it plans to scale back its marketing budget, reported that its revenue bookings were slightly higher in the second quarter of the year, and reprinted the full text of Mason’s leaked email.

More than anything, though, updating the S-1 shows that Groupon is still serious about making its stock market debut at some point soon. But ultimately, that will only happen if investors show that they have an appetite for the company’s shares.

Photo of “Hear, speak, see no evil” statue © 2003 David Monniaux, used courtesy of Creative Commons

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While we’ve reported on Groupon’s controversial financial operations before — notably at the first issuance of its S-1 in June — the company’s latest regulatory filing still contained some surprises. Here’s a roundup of some of the more interesting numbers from the daily deals pioneer’s fresh S-1:

• 9,625: The number of full-time Groupon employees as of June 30, 2011. Considering that the company had 7,107 employees as of March 31, 2011 — up from the staff of 37 it had at the end of June 2009 – that represents downright jaw-dropping employee growth.

• $878,018,000: The amount of top-line revenue Groupon took in between April 1 and June 30. That’s a 35 percent boost from the $644.7 million in revenue the company made in the first quarter of 2011.

• $102,700,000: The amount of money Groupon ultimately lost between April 1 and June 30, after paying its operational costs. That’s actually a step up from the previous quarter, when Groupon posted a loss of $117 million.

• $500,000: The base salary of Margaret Georgiadis, who was hired as Groupon’s new chief operating officer in mid-April. That makes her the Groupon executive with the highest base salary.

• -$304,904,000: Groupon’s working capital deficit as of June 30. That means that Groupon’s liabilities exceed the company’s assets by nearly $305 million. That’s about 33 percent bigger than the working capital deficit Groupon had at the end of March, which was -$228.7 million.

• 45: The number of countries Groupon is currently active in, which is two more than at the end of the first quarter.

With the larger financial markets in an ongoing tailspin following the US government’s debt downgrade, many are wondering if late-stage private companies will put their IPO plans on the back burner. With the new filing submitted Wednesday, however, Groupon is showing no signs of slowing down its public market debut. If nothing else, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason seems to be delivering on what he wrote in his letter to potential shareholders in the company’s S-1: “Life is too short to be a boring company.”

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CafePress filed its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company is looking to raise up to $80 million in an IPO to be underwritten by J.P. Morgan, Cowen and Company, and Jefferies, according to the filing.

CafePress was founded in 1999 and sells user-customized products such as clothing, accessories, posters, stickers, and housewares through its flagship website CafePress.com. The company also owns a portfolio of other sites, such as CanvasOnDemand, which turns photographs into canvas artwork, and Imagekind.com, which sells artwork from independent artists.

CafePress is profitable and apparently growing. According to the filing, the company made $2.7 million in net income on $128 million in revenues in 2010. In the first three months of 2011, CafePress made $32 million in revenues, about 45 percent more than the $22 million it made in the first quarter of 2010. Last year, the company posted adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, debt and amortization (EBITDA) of $14.5 million.

But while the company’s financials are certainly solid, one could argue they’re not exactly spectacular. CafePress’ average order size has hovered around $47 for the past three years. The company’s top-line annual revenues have see-sawed recently, from $120 million in 2008, down to $103 million in 2009, and back up to $128 million in 2010. In the filing, CafePress blamed the 2009 dip on “macro-economic conditions in our primary markets that reduced discretionary spending by our customers coupled with the absence of election year sales.”

CafePress is just the latest in a recent series of Internet companies making moves toward the public markets. In the past month, LinkedIn, Yandex and Fusion-io have gone public, Groupon filed an S-1, and Kayak and Pandora have issued optimistic S-1 updates. Whether the activity represents another tech bubble or just a healthy and growing economy, it’s certainly shaping up to be a very busy summer for Silicon Valley.

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