As Groupon flails, Coupons.com IPO shows Wall Street’s desire for traditional discounting

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MOUNTAIN VIEW — Coupons.com stock more than doubled during its first day of trading on Wall Street, as investors continued to show a taste for traditional discounting models in a high-tech world.

The company sold its first batch of 10.5 million shares at $16 apiece, pricing the stock higher than the $12-$14 range Coupons.com originally expected, to bring in $168 million at a valuation approaching $1.2 billion. That price apparently wasn’t high enough for Wall Street investors: Shares opened at $27.15 Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange and climbed from there, moving as high as $33 before closing at $30, an 87.5 percent increase that left the company with a market cap exceeding $2 billion.

“Clearly, the investors are very happy, the market’s happy, the employee base is really happy; most importantly I think our clients are really happy,” founder and CEO Stephen Boal said Friday.

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