经济学人下载:互联网企业,欢迎加入IPO俱乐部

"The path to success will have twists and turns, moments of brilliance and other moments of sheer stupidity. Knowing that this will at times be a bumpy ride, we thank you for considering joining us,” writes Groupon’s boss, Andrew Mason, in a letter to potential stockholders. Not everyone is reassured.

“成功之路蜿蜒曲折，路上光景，光辉灿烂抑或愚蠢十足。我们知道路途难免颠簸起伏，为此感谢你考虑加入我们。”高朋网的总裁，安德鲁．马森在一封献给未来股东的信件中如是写道。但这并不能让每个人都感到内心踏实。

How should one value a money-losing firm in a new industry? PwC, a consultancy, ranks web firms according to their “value per user”. This is calculated by dividing a start-up’s estimated worth (derived from venture-funding rounds, equity transactions on secondary markets and so on) by the number of its users.

那我们该如何评估新兴产业中的亏损企业呢？普华永道咨询事务所将新兴创业公司的预估价值（估值来自公司获得的风险投资和二级市场的股权交易等）除以其用户的数量，计算出企业的“每用户价值”，并根据该指标来对网络企业进行排名。

By this benchmark, Groupon scores well, just below Facebook and Renren, a Chinese social network with a listing in America (see chart). But such measures do not reflect the risks of Groupon’s model. The company may boast 83m users, but only 16m have actually bought a Groupon. Its success outside America has been patchy: just 9% of its subscribers in London have ever bought anything from it.

按照“每用户价值”的标准，高朋网的得分相当可观，仅次于脸谱（Facebook）网和人人网（在美国上市的一家中国社交网络公司）(见图表)。但这样的基准并不能反映高朋网这个案例中的风险。高朋网吹嘘自己拥有8300万名用户，但其中真正买过单的只有1600万人。该公司在美国国外的业绩更是良莠不齐：以伦敦为例，仅有9%的团客在高朋网上购买过东西。

Facebook enjoys a powerful network effect; Groupon, less so. It must spend a fortune to keep signing up new subscribers. Hence its keenness to steer investors towards a measure that excludes marketing costs. Groupon’s growth has attracted big competitors such as LivingSocial as well as a host of smaller start-ups. These rivals could poach its users with cheaper deals. And they could offer retailers better terms, too, in the process threatening Groupon’s fat margins.

脸谱网拥有强大的社群效应，这方面高朋网则逊色一筹。高朋网必须花费大笔钱财来不停地吸引新团客加入其中，正因如此，它才拼命地将投资者的注意力引到除去了营销收入的财务指标之上。高朋网在崛起的同时也诱生了强大的竞争对手Living Social和一群规模较小的新兴企业。这些竞争对手可能会以更低廉的价格挖走客户，也可能向零售商开出更优惠的条件，无一不对高朋网口中的肥肉构成威胁。

All this shows why setting an offering price for shares in an IPO is so tricky. “It’s more an art than a science,” says Paul Bard of Renaissance Capital, an IPO research firm in America. Investment banks are supposed to be masters of that art. But some people, such as Peter Thiel, a big early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn, have accused the banks involved in the LinkedIn transaction of drastically underpricing the shares.

以上种种，均说明了首次公开募股的报价是一门微妙的学问，“与其说是科学，不如说是艺术”，美国IPO研究机构复兴资本（Renaissance Capital）公司的保罗．巴德如此说道。投资银行向来被视为是这门艺术的行家，但包括脸谱和人脉网的主要早期投资者彼得．席尔在内的一些人，都对投资银行参与到人脉网的股票交易，将股票发行价大幅压低而诟病不已。

Bankers have sometimes been accused of underpricing deals so that their investment clients can make a swift killing on a firm’s shares. However in this case Mr Thiel’s gripe was that the banks failed to appreciate LinkedIn’s tremendous potential. Perhaps it never occurred to the bankers involved that people would pay so much for such a risky stock.

投资银行家有时会被指责刻意压低交易价格，以便其投资客户从购买的企业股票中大发横财。然而席尔先生的矛头这次仅针对投资银行未能意识到人脉网的巨大潜力。或许原因在于，参与投资的银行家永远都不会想到，人们竟然会为了这家风险重重的股票投入如此多的金钱。

Yet there is something to be said for erring on the side of caution when setting initial offer prices. Elizabeth Demers, a professor at INSEAD, a business school near Paris, points out that what companies lose in terms of hard cash in the early days can often be made up for in terms of the publicity they get when the news media applaud the explosive rise in their share prices. They can also launch secondary issues of other shares at the new price established by the IPO. Unless, of course, this really is a bubble, and it bursts.

在首次公开募股报价的时候，出于谨慎的考量而犯点错误是情有可原的。欧洲管理事务学院（INSEAD，巴黎附近的一家工商学院）的伊丽莎白．德默斯教授指出，企业创业早期在现金上的损失，通常能在日后新闻媒体对其股价爆发式增长的宣传和推崇中得到补偿。当然，除非IPO只是一个要破灭的泡沫，企业也可以在首次公开募股建立的股价基础上再次发行证劵。