A few minutes ago Groupon put out its first earnings release (Q4 and FY 2011) as a public company. Here are the distilled highlights:
In Q4 2011:
- Revenue was $506.5 million vs. $172.2 million in Q4 2010
- Gross billings (total amount of deals sold) was $1.25 billion in Q4 vs. $415.3 million a year earlier
- Income was $15.0 million in Q4 vs. a $336.1 million loss the year before.
- The company announced a Q4 net loss of $42.7 million
Full-Year 2011
- Gross billings of $4 billion (up 437% YoY) vs. $745.3 million in in 2010
- Revenue was $1.6 billion for the full year vs. $312.9 million in 2010
- The full-year loss was $203.4 million vs. $420.3 million in 2010.
- Groupon’s worldwide active customer base grew to over 33 million
- Gross billings per active customer: $188 in fourth quarter 2011 vs. $160 in fourth quarter 2010.
- More than 26 million people have downloaded the Groupon mobile app on their smartphones.
- Groupon Now has expanded to 31 markets (and been used by 20K merchants)
Last year in its IPO filing Groupon said that about 54% of revenues came from outside the US market. If that figure held steady over the course of the year, Groupon would have seen roughly $2.16 billion in gross billings and approximately $816 million in revenue the US last year.
Groupon beat consensus Wall Street revenue estimates despite posting a loss.
Update: Groupon disappointed on earnings and investors have punished the stock. However the company’s metrics are moving in the right direction as a general matter.
February 9th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
If daily deals are so great, why aren’t the same merchants running daily deals every day?
February 9th, 2012 at 5:17 pm
Groupon might say:
–It’s ineffective as a “best practice”
–there’s too much demand and they can’t do that
–they want to be mindful of the consumer experience
Yes, some of the hype/gloss/appeal of deals has died down but they can still be quite effective in many situations. Prob is that most SMBs don’t know what they’re doing with them
February 9th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
Price does indeed meet its own demand.
With regard to the consumer experience –
How many merchants have surveyed daily deal buyers about the perception of their company / brand after they have redeemed their daily deal?
After redemption did deal buyers have a
More Positive
Positive
Neutral
Negative
More Negative
opinion of the brand / merchant?
If daily deal buyers walk away having anything less than a positive
experience with the merchant, will it not impact whether or not the deal
buyer will ever return and buy again – let alone at retail price?
The daily deal buyer post-mortem question then becomes:
Do you plan to directly buy XYZ product /brand from ABC Company
again without a daily deal?
If so, will you expect the price for the same product to be -
Lower
Same
Higher
SMBs who ask their buyers these questions about their daily deal buying experience might instead see the daily deal value proposition isn’t quite the
deal they thought they were getting