![](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/groupon-wall-lrg.jpg?w=738\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Groupon<\/a> \u2014 the once-dominant daily deals business that has more recently tried to shift to other kinds of local commerce \u2014 today reported first-quarter earnings<\/a> that pointed to a company still in transition \u2014 or struggling to turn itself around more successfully, depending on how you look at it.<\/p>\n Dragged down by a 5.5 percent decline in its core market of North America, Groupon\u2019s revenues came in at $673.6 million, with non-GAAP earnings per share at $0.01. This was a mixed result: analysts had expected<\/a> sales of $724.4 million, a big miss for Groupon. EPS fared much better: average predictions were for a loss per share of -$0.01.<\/p>\n Those basic numbers had\u00a0a pretty hard hit on the company\u2019s share price, which was\u00a0down 13\u00a0percent in pre-market trading and now down by as much as 17.5% in active trading to $3.31 per share. (We\u2019ll update this number as the day progresses.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s a big contrast to last quarter\u2019s results<\/a>, which sent the company\u2019s stock up 24 percent.<\/p>\n Adjusted EBITDA, another metric that Groupon uses to measure its profitability, was up 42 percent year-on-year to $44.8 million, beating analyst consensus\u00a0of $37 million.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the first quarter, we continued to make solid progress in our mission to be the daily habit in local commerce,\u201d said CEO Rich Williams in a statement. \u201cOur focus on growing customers in our marketplace, significantly improving the customer experience and continuing to streamline and simplify our business helped drive a 42 percent year-over-year increase in Adjusted EBITDA and gross profit of $309 million for the quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n The company has been on a long road of trying to cut out less profitable parts of its business and refocus itself as a smaller organization on what is working well.<\/p>\n Today, Groupon announced that it had reached its goal of cutting down its operations to 15 markets in total, exiting 11 in the last quarter alone. At its peak, the company had local Groupon operations in nearly 50 countries.<\/p>\n (Interestingly, some businesses that Groupon has exited appear to be faring better as independents. Ticket Monster in Korea just last week raised $115 million<\/a> on a $1.4 billion valuation.)<\/p>\n Gross profit in the company\u2019s remaining international business was down by 15 percent to\u00a0$88.5 million as the company \u201cexperienced some execution challenges and short-term disruption from our country exits.\u201d\u00a0The company now has 16.7 million international active customers.<\/p>\n The question is what\u00a0investors\u2019 appetite will be for whatever comes next at\u00a0Groupon. There are some signs that there is a method to its madness, so to speak. The company says that its decline in its revenues in North America, which were $473 million, was down to the company shifting its focus from Goods to Local services, a push in part bolstered\u00a0by its acquisition<\/a> of LivingSocial last year.<\/p>\n Goods not only is a smaller-margin business, but it\u2019s been in decline, down 12 percent in revenues.<\/p>\n But just anecdotally, there are some question marks over how Groupon is winning over new business. A colleague of mine noted that he recently picked up a Local deal, for go-karting, but only because he\u2019d been sent a 50 percent-off voucher from the company.<\/p>\n There are now 31.6 million active customers in North America, after Groupon added 500,000 this past quarter. Globally the company has 48.3 million active customers.<\/p>\n More to come.<\/p>\n Featured Image: Groupon<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/groupon-wall-lrg.jpg?w=680\")
Groupon — the once-dominant daily deals business that has more recently tried to shift to other kinds of local commerce — today reported first-quarter earnings that pointed to a company still in transition — or struggling to turn itself around more successfully, depending on how you look at it.
\nDragged down by a 5.5 percent decline in its core market of North America… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n\n<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>
<\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-339958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}