Living social CEO and Co-Founder Tim O’Shaughnessy spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Liz Claman about plans for a possible initial public offering (IPO) and the competition with similar social media sites. O’Shaughnessy stated that an IPO “needs to be right for the company” and there are no plans for an IPO yet. O’Shaughnessy goes on to discuss the competitive landscape saying Livingsocial has gained “tens of millions of customers” and “hundreds of thousands of merchant relationships,” and as a result has become one of the social media companies “able to elevate themselves over the last year or two” above the competition.
Excerpts are below:
On whether O’Shaughnessy is contemplating an IPO:
“We look at something like an IPO like we always have, which is there are kind of market performance items out there, but it really needs to be right for the company. And it is something that we pretty consistently look at. So there is nothing to report at this particular moment in time.”
On the competitive landscape facing Livingsocial:
“As far as the competitive landscape, you’ve really seen a couple of companies really be able to elevate themselves over the last year or two and I think we’re one of those companies. And now you’re starting to enter this next phase where Livingsocial built up tens of millions of customers – hundreds of thousands of merchant relationships and we can really leverage those to go into additional categories and local commerce. I think similarly how Amazon had tons of customers have built up a distribution relationship and went from books to movies, and music all sorts of categories.”