LG Uplus Inc., South Korea's smallest mobile carrier, has been shortlisted for the stake sale of Ticket Monster Inc., the first deal-of-the-day website in the country currently owned by U.S. Groupon Inc., company and industry sources said Friday.

LG Uplus said in a regulatory filing that it has submitted a letter of intent for the bid. The company spokesman declined to comment further, citing that it's an ongoing deal.

The Seoul-based arm of Deutche Bank AG that manages the deal has picked LG Uplus and four others, including consortia of private equity firms, as viable candidates to acquire a stake in the South Korean e-commerce company valued at least 1 trillion won (US$913 million), according to industry sources familiar with the matter.

The candidates will hold due diligence in January, with the final bidder to be announced at the end of this month.

Ticket Monster, or TMON, was created by Daniel Shin, a Wharton Business School graduate, in 2010 and made a huge success in its early years. In 2011, he sold the venture firm to U.S. LivingSocial for $360 million, before Groupon bought it for $260 million in late 2013.

But it took less than a year for Groupon to begin searching last October for a partner who would help shoulder increasing marketing costs amid cutthroat competition with two local rivals -- Coupang and WeMakePrice.

TMON posted an annual operating loss of 70.8 billion won in 2013, with 114.9 billion won in sales.

Local media have reported that Groupon, which holds a 100 percent stake in TMON, could sell either a partial or controlling stake to the bidder, implying that the U.S. daily-deal firm is considering exiting the Korean market, although Groupon has repeatedly denied such plans.

South Korea's e-commerce market is estimated to have grown to a size worth around 3.4 trillion won as of the end of 2014, according to local market data. (Yonhap)