Looks like Groupon will go public Friday morning at $20 per share, giving it a valuation of $12.6 billion, for its online coupon business. That seems crazy high for a company with a massive amount of competitors and potentially questionable recurring value for small businesses (though what do I know, I write about energy). Anyhoos, I thought we could take that company’s valuation and compare it to some of the greentech startups, and some of the big energy and oil incumbents.

Greentech startups:

• Fuel cell maker Bloom Energy is reportedly valued at almost $3 billion — a fourth of what Groupon is worth. (Fun tip, NEA is a major investor in both). Bloom Energy is trying to sell distributed cleaner power to companies and utilities
• Electric car maker Fisker is reportedly valued at $2.2 billion and Tesla Motors has a current market cap of $3.38 billion. So almost a sixth of the valuation, and close to a fourth of the valuation, respectively, of Groupon.
• Public biofuel company Kior has a market cap of $1.63 billion, almost an eighth of the valuation of Groupon. Kior is making a biocrude from plant waste and energy crops using a technique from the oil industry.
• Algae oil company Solazyme has a market cap of about $550 million. I’m not even going to do this math comparing it to Groupon because it makes me sad.

Things that have bigger marketcaps than Groupon: oil companies, conglomerates, big auto, big Internet

• Oil behemoth Exxon Mobile has a market cap of $377.98 billion, 30 times the size of Groupon’s marketcap.
• Google has a marketcap of $193.52 billion, 15 times the size of Groupon.
• GE has a marketcap of $176.37 billion, about 14 times Groupons.
• General Motors has a marketcap of $37.53 billion, just three times the size of Groupon.
• Building automation giant Honeywell has a marketcap of $41.72 billion, or three times the size of Groupon.
• Chemical giant Dow Chemical has a marketcap of $32.98 billion, about two and half times larger than Groupon.

Big energy, utility:

• Power company Duke Energy has a marketcap of $27.71 billion, about double the size of Groupon.
• NRG Energy, which has invested a lot in clean power, has a marketcap $5.23 billion. Groupon’s marketcap is over double that (getting disturbing).
• Itron is one of the largest smart meter makers in the U.S. It has a market cap of $1.56 billion, or an eighth of Groupons (ouch).

Image courtesy of Futurilla.

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