Groupon Aims to Rebuild Confidence After Post-IPO Slump. Groupon Inc. (GRPN), the largest daily coupon website, has work to do if it’s to rebuild investor confidence after one of the worst public market debuts for a Web company since the dot-com crash. The Chicago-based company has dropped 51 percent since its initial public offering in November and is now valued at just above the $6 billion offer it rejected from Google Inc. 17 months ago. Investors will look for signs of optimism later today from a first-quarter earnings report that analysts predict will show an 80 percent jump in sales to $530.8 million and improving profitability. Groupon, which created the daily-deal market less than four years ago, has been troubled by mounting losses, accounting errors and regulatory missteps, leading investors to look past international sales growth and new products. “There is a lot of negativity priced in and not much hope,” said Clayton Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Co. in Boca Raton, Florida, who has a “buy” rating on the stock.
Results Report. Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Daily Deals Business In Europe. Inc. - Events & Presentations. Groupon? More Like Group-Off! - MarketBeat. Here's The Chart That Will Scare The Bejeezus Out Of Groupon Investors. Today, Groupon filed a prospectus to raise funds via a public offering. Over the next week, they will be pitching investors to participate in this offering. One question these potential investors should make sure to ask: what happened to Groupon’s quarter over quarter growth rate? Why is the growth rate collapsing? There are a few potential reasons why their revenue growth could be stalling.
Reduced marketing spend. While Groupon was able to break even this quarter, they did so by reducing their marketing spend. Unfortunately, marketing spend also fuels growth by acquiring new subscribers. Halted Growth in Deals Offered. For a business that’s roughly break-even, Groupon will certainly need to justify a valuation over $10 billion via a growth story. Vinicius Vacant is co-founder and CEO of Yipit, the leading daily deal aggregator. This post originally appeared at Yipit blog. HEY, GROUPON HATERS, ANALYZE THIS: Groupon Breaks Even In Q3. The Rodney Dangerfield of CEOs. For the past six months, just about every pundit in the world has piled on Groupon, denouncing it as a crappy, fraudulent Ponzi scheme that will ultimately collapse in a heap. At the heart of this collective dismissal has been the conviction that Groupon will "never make money. " Well, those self-assured pundits will be a bit quieter this morning. Groupon just reported its Q3 results. Here are some highlights: "Gross billings" growth (formerly Groupon's "revenue") was very strong, rising 24% sequentially to nearly $1.2 billion for the quarter.
"Revenue" growth was also solid, albeit distinctly slower than gross billings as a result of revenue mix (Groupon has launched several new, lower-margin products that took "shelf-space" away from the higher margin core local products). "Cumulative Customers" continued to grow rapidly, hitting 29.5 million, despite marketing spending dropping significantly. And here's the kicker: Groupon basically broke even. That's right: Google buys another Groupon clone, snaps up German website DailyDeal - TNW Google. With reports that Google’s Groupon competitor Google Offers has gotten off to a slow start, the company has announced another acquisition in the Daily Deals space, snapping up German deal site DailyDeal. The Berlin-based deals website was founded in September 2009 by brothers Fabian and Ferry Heilemann, with reported sales of 252,000 vouchers in the first three months of 2011.
The company has already expanded outside of Germany to Austria and Switzerland, with the Austrian website already surpassing Groupon in the country – according to Fabian Heilemann. The company has announced plans to expand to a wider European audience, with Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg the next possible markets. As a result, the company expects to record around €40 million in 2011 alone. Currently, Google’s own Daily Deals service is only available to North American customers, launching in a number of states across the U.S.
The terms of the deal are unknown at the time of writing. Yelp Is the Latest to Turn from Deals. Groupon Revenue Hit $760 Million Last Year. Groupon Launches National Deal With Gap, Selling 10 Groupons A Second. What a difference a deal makes. This morning, Groupon launched its first nationwide deal, $25 off a $50 purchase at Gap. The promotion, which was available in every city, briefly crashed Groupon’s servers as deal-happy consumers clicked on the 50% discount and pinged their friends. Despite the technical difficulties, according to Groupon‘s CEO Andrew Mason, as of 11AM PST (the e-mail blast went out at roughly 6AM in each time zone) Groupon has sold 200,000 Groupons and is currently selling roughly 10 per second. Ten sales per second is an unusually high volume, Mason says, “several multiples above the average.” If this trend persists, Groupon will likely sell more than 700,000 Gap Groupons by the end of day.
Update: The pace of sales fizzled out later in the day. Although Groupon has dabbled in multi-city deals, this is the first time they have partnered with a national retailer for a full countrywide roll out. The upside for Gap is a little less cut and dry. Rob Solomon. Groupon Launches Deal Personalization, Opens Door To (More) Explosive Growth. Local deal goliath Groupon is launching a major new feature today: deal personalization, giving the site the ability to send you the deals it thinks you’ll be most interested in.
Before now, Groupon has always offered one or two deals per city per day to its users. That’s still going to be true, but with a twist: the site will be sending different deals to users based on criteria like their gender, buying history, and their interests. The change may sound fairly minor, but it will likely have a big impact on Groupon’s bottom line. Groupon’s simplicity has no doubt contributed to its success, but this is one case where it has some very good reasons for introducing a few extra options: personalization will help the site fend off the 500 clones that are gunning for it, it will allow Groupon to offer an unlimited number of deals, and the site can now offer deals from businesses located outside of large cities.
Again, to users, this won’t be readily apparent. Groupon Makes Leap Into Japan and Russia With Latest Acquisitions. Our favorite digital coupon group buying site Groupon has cemented its foray into Japan and Russia today with the acquisitions of Japanese and Russian deals sites Qpod and Darberry respectively. Groupon has a tendency to acquire and rebrand its better outfitted clones, most recently buying the German startup Citydeal as an outpost of its European expansion.
Groupon, which has the dubious distinction of being a startup with a built in business model, recently raised $135M in Series C funding lead by DST and Battery Ventures. The site also just launched “personalized deals,” which are also in line with the company’s push towards expansion. Groupon Japan and Groupon Russia are the latest notches in Groupon’s belt of world domination; The company now serves up deals to more than 13 million subscribers in 29 countries and employs more than 1,200 people worldwide. Groupon se lance dans la vente en direct avec Groupon Goods. Alors que Groupon revoit ses revenus à la baisse, il prévoit de lancer une plate-forme e-commerce pour faire face à des concurrents comme Amazon. Un changement stratégique majeur. Le site de vente de coupons en ligne Groupon a envoyé hier des emails commerciaux a un nombre restreint d'abonnés américains leur proposant de leur vendre des téléviseurs LED, cafetières et autres produits à bas prix, catégorisant ces offres sous la bannière "Groupon Goods".
Selon Reuters, le site serait en fait en train de lancer une branche e-commerce pour contrer la concurrence de sites marchands comme Amazon. Une opération de ce type avait déjà été lancé la semaine dernière sans porter la mention "Groupon Goods". Selon Reuters, l'offre envoyée hier a rencontré de bons résultats. L'ancien co-fondateur de Citydeal, Rajen Ruparell, prendrait la tête de Groupon Goods, qui ne dispose pas encore de site dédié.. | Groupon Boston. Politically progressive, ethnically diverse, and packed with boisterous pubs, Boston has evolved quite a bit since it was founded by prim Puritans.
But for all it's changed, you’ll still find evidence of the city’s rich history seemingly everywhere you look. In the Beacon Hill neighborhood, gas-lit cobblestone streets meander past trendy boutiques and organic grocery stores, and in Boston Common—one of the oldest parks in the country—you’ll find both students flinging Frisbees and costumed guides leading tours of Colonial history. Often landmarks aren't made to stand apart from the rest of the city, but rather blend in seamlessly. Locals tend to forget they're strolling past Paul Revere’s house after picking up pastries in a North End bakery, or passing the site of the Boston Massacre on their way to work in a downtown office building. It is hard to miss the 221-foot Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown, however. It would be ill advised to walk into Fenway Park wearing a Yankees cap.