Groupon Sells Controlling Stake in Korean Site Ticket Monster for $360 Million

What a difference a year makes.

A year ago, Groupon acquired Korean deals site Ticket Monster from its competitor LivingSocial for $260 million in cash and stock. On Monday, Groupon announced it was selling a 46 percent stake in Ticket Monster, or TMON, for $360 million to private equity firm KKR and Hong Kong’s Anchor Equity Partners in a deal valuing TMON at $782 million. (TMON executives own 13 percent of the equity, effectively handing over control.) Groupon will receive $285 million when the transaction closes, while TMON will receive the remaining $75 million. Now that’s a deal.

The sale marks a nice financial coup for Groupon and comes a few weeks after Re/code reported that the company was considering selling off its Breadcrumb restaurant software unit.

Groupon is a couple of years into an effort to reinvigorate its business by transforming its website into a shopping destination for local services and products that customers visit regularly without relying on one-off email promotions to bring them to the site. It’s dumping millions upon millions of dollars in marketing to push this transformation, which helps explain why it would sell off non-core pieces along the way.

In the case of TMON, formerly known as Ticket Monster, Groupon CEO Eric Lefkofksy acknowledged recently that the Korean site was going to need more investment than Groupon had anticipated in order to maintain its position and grow in a highly competitive Korean market. Groupon will maintain a 41 percent stake in the company and record a pre-tax gain on the sale of between $195 million and $205 million when it closes in the second quarter.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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