Groupon (GRPN) Earnings: What Went Wrong?

To start with, GRPN has a non-attractive business model & is way overvalued. The good news is that if you own it, you'll get many years of tax write-offs. Same goes for Facebook & Netflix.

The next bubble will once again be a "tech" bubble. Only this time, it won't be so tech...it will be companies that have leveraged tech in their business models. When a 100 year old company that pays a +5% dividend is firmly entrenched in its markets with barriers to entry, a solid balance sheet, good earnings and good cash flow is trading at 9x and some "idea" company that can be replicated with significant market erosion impact quickly...but it makes no money has negative cash flow and trades at 100x multiple.... something is wrong with people. Put it this way. If you had a company that was really worth $10B why would you take it public? Filing fees are huge, regulatory costs are huge...tons of extra cost. They take the "idea" stocks public so fast to get their money and be out of it before the sky falls.
Short all of these with $10-$15K each and you could probably retire in 5-10 years.

Linkedin = market cap $7.4B
Groupon = $13.7B
Netflix market cap = $7B
Facebook = who knows what this turd will fetch

As if individually they aren't bad enough...add all those suckers up. No FB included = +$28B in market cap? That is $4 of value for every man, woman and child on earth? I just went looking for a decent example of a company with a comparable market cap. I noticed that Duke Energy (DUK) has a market cap of 28.5B. So the largest power supplier (IN THE FREAKING COUNTRY) has the same market cap as 3 "idea" stocks? Duke pays a decent dividend 4.5%. If I don't pay my power bill, they'll turn it off. My power bill last month was ~$140. Know how much I spent on LinkedIn, FB, Groupon or Netflix? Zero....but I belong to or have access to all 4. What about you? How much money did you spend last month on those sites and how much will you spend next month? Now compare that to your power bill. Survey your friends and see what they say. For giggles, ask them to compare that to what they spent on their power bills. Smell the insanity of it yet? Short, Short, Short. It is ridiculous the herd mentality chasing "the next big thing". Those are nothing more than convenience services. They serve no real purpose and customer $$ and loyalty is fragile at best.

Groupon may be worth $1 billion, but not $15 billion!

Groupon is worth zero, they don't make any money!

The problem with groupon is that their deals are very sparse. I have used Groupon 4 times in the past year, was happy with the deals I received, have yet to have a bad experience but most of the time when I check the groupon deals they have nothing I am interested in. If groupon wants to keep people like me interested, they need to have alot of deals and in the categories I am interested in.

Groupon is worthless. Facebook is worthless. Any company that relies on people's tastes are worthless.

What a shocker. Anyone who can do basic math and has run a lemonade stand could have figured this one out.

Groupon is a crap stock. The idea is ok, but too easy to copy overseas (did someone say China?). Advertising webware is going the way of social networks...remember the AOL! The next coolest thing comes along and Groupon will be dropped like a hot potato. Besides, the poor consumer is inundated with newer ways to have money vacuumed out of their wallet all the time, Groupon will never have a major share of the advertising market.

No, Groupon stock was issued so that Wall Street could collect commissions and fees on the sale, and they already have pension funds and whatnot lined up to buy buy buy the next hottest thing that they don't understand. There is a sucker born every minute, and Wall Street is going back to basics by attracting suckers with hopes and dreams.

A perfect stock for all of you too young to get burned back in the 90's with all the other web-based, dot bomb stocks. Enjoy.

SUCKERS

more like what went wrong with our country???

What Went Wrong? Failed business model in the first place.

What went wrong? Besides being a fairly lame idea in the first place?

30 mil active in the past year, Ha, The web is measured in daily, weekly month, yearly is not a relevant stat. Show us the monthly users and you will see the churn. Get your marshmallows ready folks.

Remember Amazon which was once called the "river of NO returns?" GRPN seems similar. I wouldn't be surprised to see losses for years. And that's only if businesses who sell through groupon can figure out how to use Groupon profitably. I can't fathom how it's done since it doesn't appear to be able to generate repeat business at regular prices.

Hey Macke, do your math. 20% growth is a geometric progression, hence exponential. The exponent is this case would be 1.2. Wrap yourself in a slanket and feel the bones in your head. Hence bone head.

Here is the deal....If the earning would have came out like we expected, the comments on this page would be a complete 180. They need to take care of the bumps in the road and make sure their competitors don't play ball in the game. Also, the stock ran up in the last 3 weeks off of facebook to cover the 15% loss it had yesterday. I liked the revenue numbers and the new almost 200% increase in capturing new clients. What does worry me is the fact that they made a simple tax mistake. That should not happen..

Makes you wonder how many of our polititions sold on insider news on this one.

Always entertaining.

Too much blah blah. We need the facts: How loyal are the customers? What are metrics that Groupon wants to be measured on? Massive top line growth is massively valuable if and only it they can morph the business into sustainable profit. And that requires customer loyalty. So journalists - I'm talking to you Jeff - Do your job. Demand the facts from Groupon. Tell them, no facts, no story published.