Groupon makes profit but less than expected

by Mark Tyson on 14 August 2012, 12:00

Tags: Groupon

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Another young internet based business, another Wall Street disappointment. Groupon, the world’s largest daily deals provider released results showing revenue was lower than expected by investors. Expectations play a big part in share values so Groupon shares took a tumble of over 18 per cent in afterhours trading.

The numbers

  • 2012 Q2 revenue was $568 million compared to 2011 Q2 figure of $393 million
  • 2012 Q2 net income was $28.4 million compared to 2011 Q2 figure of -$107.4 million
  • Groupon now has 38 million active customers, 65 per cent up from a year ago
  • Shares were launched in November last year at $20, peaked at $31 and are $6.14 right now (afterhours in New York, they closed at $7.55 before this news came out)

Profits and losses

Groupon’s profits of $28.4 million for Q2 reverses the loss of $107.4 million a year ago but the market was expecting a higher figure from the range forecasted by Groupon earlier in the year. The Q2 2012 revenue forecast by Groupon was in the range of $550 million to $590 million with Wall Street expecting a figure around $573 million according to Reuters. From this revenue Wall Street expected net income in the range of $70 million to $80 million. This is how, even though Groupon made a profit, a much better result than a year ago, investors were disappointed.

Blame Europe

Andrew Mason, Groupon's chief executive, said “We had a solid quarter despite challenges in Europe and continued investment in technology and infrastructure.” He said higher priced deals in Europe needed more balance with lower price accessible offers. “We've learned in North America that the best way to maximize gross revenue dollars for Groupon is to find the right balance between consumer and merchant value”. He is positive that the American success can be repeated in Europe by some fine tweaking “By doing so in Europe, we have a clear opportunity to unlock growth and achieve the same kind of market penetration of Internet users that we have in North America.”


Do you need a fish pedicure?

Does anyone find Groupon to be a good and useful source of deals? Do we need it in the UK when HotUKDeals offers user selected and member mass rated deals, vouchers and freebies? Also don’t forget the HEXUS Current Bargains forum aimed at your IT shopping requirements!



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Right, as I am not particularly well-versed in economic theory, vould someone please explain this to me.

Groupon:

- $6.14 per share.
- Q2 revenue of $568 million, profit of $28.4 million.


Facebook:

- $21.60 per share
- Q2 revenue $1.18 billion Net loss of $157 million

My question is why are Facebooks shares worth more than 3x as much as Groupon's, despite making a substantial loss?

EDIT: source for Facebook figures

Revenue/Net income http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/technology/facebook-reports-a-loss-but-its-revenue-beats-expectations.html
Stock price http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Facebook-s-dip-cuts-gains-as-lockup-ends-3785608.php
How about offer some deals for a) Stuff that isn't fish pedicures, hair cuts etc which 90% seems to be b) Have real offers (Every product I've been interested in on groupon has proved cheaper elsewhere).

Can't help but feel groupon and the like is just a bit of a fad…
Groupon is a fad. Any saving you can make on the retail price would be absorbed by groupon themselves. The offer providers usually get overwhelmed by interest and piss off most of the customers that sign up. Everybody loses while groupon skims off a little profit.

If they're lucky they'll end up like eBay. Popularity will dwindle and then things will settle down.

We all know that eBay is cheap because the stuff that's on there is dodgy, fake or broken. Soon everyone will know that groupon offers genuine spa experiences but you need to be prepared to be treated like garbage.
Zerox
Right, as I am not particularly well-versed in economic theory, vould someone please explain this to me.

Groupon:

- $6.14 per share.
- Q2 revenue of $568 million, profit of $28.4 million.


Facebook:

- $21.60 per share
- Q2 revenue $1.18 billion Net loss of $157 million

My question is why are Facebooks shares worth more than 3x as much as Groupon's, despite making a substantial loss?

EDIT: source for Facebook figures

Revenue/Net income http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/technology/facebook-reports-a-loss-but-its-revenue-beats-expectations.html
Stock price http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Facebook-s-dip-cuts-gains-as-lockup-ends-3785608.php

Company valuations are not done on price per share. This is an arbitary amount when viewed in isolation from the number of shares in circulation.

Market capitalisation is the most basic way of comparing two companies and is the most common company attribute published in the non-specialist press.
Number of shares x price per share = market capitalisation.

In reality, market capitalisation is a snapshot of company size but cannot be used to assess the investment potential of a company, e.g. under or overweight.

One way of assessing a company's ‘value’ against its stock price is to generate a price to earnings forward multiple. The most basic of these would use the ‘Market Price per Share’/'expected EPS', where EPS is ‘earnings per share’. Earnings here would be defined as EBIT, ‘earnings before interest and taxes’.

There are many other factors that would influence whether an investor would want to hold a share, e.g. dividend earnings, projected market share, sector growth (think Kodak) etc.

In the case of Groupon, investors/speculators raised the share price to value the company against a specific forward earnings multiple and that proved to be overly flattering. The price has therefore ‘corrected’.
In the case of Facebook, there are doubts about its business model. Until investors see evidence that Facebook can transform its customer base into a predictable revenue stream it will be difficult to assess its value at all.
I've grown to hate groupon too much spam and not enough useful offers