经济学人下载:互联网企业,欢迎加入IPO俱乐部

Web companies from China, Russia and elsewhere are also rushing to list on American exchanges. Shortly after LinkedIn’s stunning debut, which saw its share price more than double, Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine, floated its shares on the NYSE. Its price soared by more than 50% on the first day of trading. These first-day “pops”, as bankers call them, have stoked fears that a new internet bubble is inflating and reignited a furious debate about how best to value web start-ups.

中国、俄罗斯以及其他国家的网络公司也在争先恐后地加入美国证劵交易所的上市名单。在人脉网一炮走红，股价上升两倍多之后不久，俄罗斯最大的搜索引擎Yandex也立马在纽约证交所（NYSE）发行了自己的股份，股价在首日的升值便超过了50%。这些一夜涌现的“暴发户”（许多银行家如是称呼）激起了人们对于出现新一轮网络产业泡沫的忧虑，也引发了一场关于“如何正确评估新兴网络公司”的激烈辩论。

Groupon’s potential price tag ($15 billion, by one estimate) is already controversial. Labelled “the fastest-growing company ever” by ardent fans, the firm has turned a simple concept into a money-spinner. Customers sign up to receive offers from local firms. Groupon spices up the process by, say, having some offers expire unless a certain minimum number of people subscribe to them. This prompts people to nag their friends to shop at the same boutique or eat at the same diner—hence the “group” in Groupon.

高朋网的价值评估（一度被估计达150亿美元）一直充满争议。该企业凭借将一个简单概念化为摇钱树的本事，被许多热心的崇拜者标榜为“史上发展得最快的公司”。顾客可以通过签约来获得当地商家的优惠价格。高朋网则往这个过程中添油加醋，例如，“在期限前若未达到最低订购人数，本优惠将会失效”，此举便能激励顾客不断地催促朋友去购买同一件衣服，或者在同一家餐馆进餐——这就是高朋网所谓的“团购”。

The firm typically keeps roughly half of the money that customers fork out, with the rest going to the businesses that actually supply the goods and services. Last year its revenues were $713m. In the first quarter of 2011 it took in a breathtaking $645m. Although Groupon is less than three years old, it operates in 43 countries and has no fewer than 83m subscribers.

高朋网通常将大约一半的消费者付款纳入囊中，将剩下的部分交给实际提供了商品或服务的商家手中。去年其岁入高达7.13亿美元，而仅2011年头三个月的进账就达到了惊人的6.45亿美元。尽管高朋网诞生才不到3年，它的业务已经涵盖43个国家，团客多达8300万人。

The snag is that the company is still bleeding red ink. It lost $390m in 2010 and $103m in the first quarter of this year. Critics find this alarming. Groupon retorts that it is simply spending heavily to scoop up subscribers while the market it created is in its infancy. In its IPO prospectus, it urges investors to focus on other measures, such as free cashflow (operating cashflow minus capital expenditure), which was positive last year, and the arcane-sounding “adjusted consolidated segment operating income”, which excludes such things as cash spent on online marketing.

该公司的顽疾在于血淋淋的财政赤字。2010年损失为3.9亿美元，而本年度头三个月就亏损了1.03亿美元。批评家认为这个现象值得敲响警钟，但高朋网反驳说这片新开创的市场尚处发展初期，赤字仅是源于招揽团客所需的大笔开销。高朋网的公开招股说明书鼓励投资者将注意力集中在其他指标上，例如在去年显示出盈利的自由现金流（营运现金流减去资本支出），以及听上去晦涩难懂的“调整综合区运营收入”，其实就是除去诸如网络营销等开支后的财务数字。