
Groupon Announces First Quarter 2012 Results - larrys
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120514006700/en/Groupon-Announces-Quarter-2012-Results
======
jcampbell1
These numbers were released after the close, but every trader and their
brother was buying this morning. Insider trading is rampant on Wall St. This
is clearly yesterday's news for the privileged few.

~~~
noname123
Eh, it's actually because everyone who's shorting GRPN covering their shares
prior to the catalyst event. Everybody knew that GRPN's earnings were going to
be positive (not positive but that it's going from red ink to earning
$0.01/share, ha), so even though this company is POS. For the short-term, you
don't want to going against the herd who will be turning around from bashing
to mildly praising. When shorts cover, it's a wave that eventually lead to a
squeeze which causes more shorts to cover - lifting the price.

Personally, this is a great event. GRPN will go up a little, leaving it more
room for the slow bleed later and given that there's also weekly option
series. GRPN is a great stock to trade.

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marcusf
So revenues up from $295m to $559m and operating income from -$146mn to
$-12mn. Managing to grow revenue while narrowing the gap to black by quite a
margin, good on them. I just wish they would quite re-stating the non-GAAP
numbers. What value do they have beyond letting the press release have a
dubious headline?

~~~
pitdesi
Actually most companies and ALL analysts use non-GAAP numbers (search for your
favorite company + non-gaap
[https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...</a>)... it
reflects the true nature of the business. They are also referred to as pro-
forma numbers. There isn't any funny business going on here. It is good that
we have GAAP so you can compare apples to apples in different industries but
for a further breakdown non-GAAP numbers are very useful to an analyst.

~~~
marcusf
Yeah but the non-GAAP numbers exclude customer acquisition costs (e.g.
marketing). Not sure why that's excluded as marketing is a continuous and
fundamental cost of doing business.

~~~
pitdesi
No they don't. You misunderstood what acquisition-related costs means.
Acquisition related costs are costs related to acquiring another company, not
acquiring a customer. It is completely standard practice to treat one-time
costs like that differently.

~~~
marcusf
Ok, sorry, I misunderstood. I had lingering memories of the critiques against
groupons earlier non-GAAP measures [1][2][3][4][5][6] but the non-GAAP net
income mostly seems to exclude stock, acquistion costs are pretty low and very
clearly separated from marketing and customer acquisitions. Again, my bad.

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190363560457647...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472531846174782.html)

[2] [http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/2/banking-capital-
markets_g...](http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/2/banking-capital-
markets_groupon-earnings-net-loss-accounting)

[3] <http://blogs.smeal.psu.edu/grumpyoldaccountants/archives/530>

[4] [http://www.scalefinance.com/accounting-finance-and-
groupons-...](http://www.scalefinance.com/accounting-finance-and-groupons-ipo-
mess/)

[5] [http://blog.agrawals.org/2011/09/24/groupons-cost-of-
revenue...](http://blog.agrawals.org/2011/09/24/groupons-cost-of-revenue-is-
soaring/)

[6] [http://takingpitches.com/2011/06/04/groupon-s1-ipo-
marketing...](http://takingpitches.com/2011/06/04/groupon-s1-ipo-marketing-
spend-subscriber-acquisition-cost-or-priming-the-pump/)

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SODaniel
What worries me is that Groupon is still just a company that 'happened' to be
able to raise enough capital to become the biggest of 100s of businesses all
doing the same thing.

Nothing about their business is hard to replicate, nothing is revolutionary,
nothing has not been done before.

It seems many investors and analysts see a 'social media shopping experience'
while all I see is a flyer in my mailbox 'on the internet'.

What's to stop Groupon from becoming the MySpace of online coupons to a future
Facebook in the same sphere?

~~~
drumdance
This is somewhat true of Amazon as well, though they later went on innovate
with their web services. Early on they just happened to be one of the first
and capitalized on their access to cheap capital.

~~~
pyoung
Amazon's distribution and logistical network is a major asset that would cost
a ton of money to replicate. This is a major barrier to entry and Amazon's
primary competitive advantage in the online retail space. Groupon's main
advantage (other than being the first mover) is merely a giant e-mail list of
customers and merchants, nothing that a scrappy team can't try to replicate on
the cheap.

~~~
mattmanser
I think you underestimate the cost of _a giant e-mail list of customers and
merchants_ that's clean and they have some sort of relationship with.

If for some reason Groupon went under tomorrow, what do you think that asset
would be worth? As from my experience with sales, a lot.

~~~
SODaniel
I agree it would be worth a pretty penny. But $8 billion? I think not.

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mbell
Does this report in combination with the board members who resigned ~2 weeks
ago smell somewhat...fishy...to anyone else? If things were going so well, why
did 2 board members bail?

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martinshen
I think Groupon has far more potential than people assume. By being the
biggest and having established some integration with local merchants, they
could dominate the local space beyond just daily deals.

~~~
loceng
Except for the market is changing.

~~~
scarface548
Which market isn't changing?. No good business is build assuming that market
wont change.

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debacle
On one hand, good for them and hopefully they'll be profitable in Q2.

On the other hand, how can we be sure these are the real numbers will all of
the recent scandal?

~~~
tonycoco
Hopefully, because the SEC is doing their job.

~~~
capred
Unfortunately its not about the desire for the SEC todo their job, its
ability.

New top-grads in finance (and highly sought after performers) go to work at
large banks simply based on incentive structures. The SEC is out gunned from
the get-go.

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cantbecool
I guess DHH will have to put his foot in his mouth now.

~~~
staunch
Nah. He already figured out what to say any time he's wrong: "Well, they won
the lottery!"

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hcurtiss
The bleeding has slowed, but still bleeding. Difficult to gauge whether the
patient will survive. That people pour(ed) so much money into this continues
to astound me.

Also surprised by the upbeat comments here.

~~~
Steko
I'm surprised by the continued negative drum beating by some. The
technocommentariat has had it in for their favorite "big Ponzi scheme" for
awile but ... here Groupon is, not going bankrupt like the top comments in
every related HN thread for the last year have assured us they shortly would.
On the contrary they're doing great.

~~~
gergles
Yeah, losing $10+MM a quarter sure is "doing great" by any normal person's
intepretation of the phrase.

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rmATinnovafy
Groupon (and the million of copies) only proves the need for better marketing
options for businesses (all sizes).

It has broken the barries of online marketing by showing the common person
that they can profit from internet marketing.

There is so much potential and money in this area that I sometimes wonder why
more startups are not attacking it.

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treenyc
That is great news. Groupon is a great company that can help build local
business, local communities and in turn raise the popsicle index.

That make it far more important than what Facebook or any other trendy startup
is doing.

~~~
jbigelow76
For everyone like me that has to look up the "Popsicle Index" here you go:
<http://solari.com/blog/the-popsicle-index-rant/>

It's a succinct and catchy concept, the rant seems oversimplified IMO, but I
do like the concept.

~~~
Almaviva
Ironically I think Popsicles actually reduce their own index! Empty calories
and concentrated sugar being given to children probably harms their health in
the long run.

~~~
jbigelow76
True, but the whimsy of a popsicle is probably part of the reason the concept
resonates with people.

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antr
Unfortunately "good" or surprising results do not justify a high valuation.
Regardless of the company.

I won't get tired of saying this.

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brokentone
Ehh, I'm going to wait and read the story when their second set of numbers
comes out. Happened twice so far...

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timaelliott
Relevant + Show HN: <https://analytics.savvr.com/login> username: groupon /
password: data

Interactive reporting of every Groupon deal, this demo account goes back to
2011.

~~~
usaar333
What is the data source?

~~~
timaelliott
Our own data. We collect, cleanse and analyze data from the local commerce
industry. Our database contains about 3M deals which represent around $4B in
consumer spending. We currently track about 260 deal sites in North America,
including Groupon.

Our platform is continually monitoring the industry from a variety of sources.
The reporting platform and API runs off a dimensionally modeled DB. The UI is
pretty rough at this point, really just a MVP to demonstrate our data and the
direction we are headed.

~~~
ahi
GRPN reported $1,354,800,000 in gross billings for the quarter ending March
31st. You data shows $465,383,098. Still more scraping to do.

~~~
timaelliott
Our platform currently tracks Groupon.com which covers US and Canada. Groupon
has 47 technically separate sites to make up their full international
business.

