Online Coupon Giant RetailMeNot (Formerly WhaleShark Media) Files For $230M IPO

Online coupon giant RetailMeNot has just filed for $230 million IPO, according to an S-1 released today.

RetailMeNot, which was acquired in 2010 by the $300 million-funded WhaleShark Media, operates one of the largest digital coupon marketplaces (WhaleShark was subsequently rebranded as RetailMeNot this year). In 2012, the marketplace featured digital coupons from over 60,000 retailers and brands, and the site saw more than 450 million total visits to desktop and mobile websites last year. As of December 31, 2012, the company said it has contracts with more than 10,000 retailers, or paid retailers. RetailMeNot sites account for the majority of the company’s traffic.

In terms of financials, RetailMeNot reports that revenues increased from $16.9 million in 2010 to $144.7 million in 2012. In the same period, net income increased from $2.3 million to $26 million, so the company appears to be profitable, and growing.

The Austin-based company has raised $300 million in funding from Google Ventures, IVP, Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Adam Street Partners. Whaleshark had previously acquired a number of other coupon sites, including vouchercodes, deals2buy, coupon7, couponshare, cheapstingybargains.com, and deals.com.

It’s good to see a non-enterprise, consumer-focused company bet on the public markets in this climate. We’ve definitely seen a number of strong enterprise IPOs, so it will be interesting to see how the markets react to the more consumer-facing, and ecommerce-related RetailMeNot.