When it went public to much fanfare last year, Groupon‘s main message to investors was its astronomical growth.
Now that the daily deals company is posting much more earthbound results, it appears that investors want out.
Shares of Groupon tumbled 28 percent by midday on Friday, to an all-time low of $2.82, after the company posted yet another set of disappointing quarterly results. While it narrowed its loss to about $3 million, the online coupon pioneer missed its own forecasts.
Investors were largely willing to forgive Groupon's litany of missteps in the run-up to its I.P.O., from its backtracking from a highly controversial profit metric to the disclosure of material weakness in its financial controls and a concomitant restatement of earnings.
That good will appears to have evaporated: The company is now worth just $1.8 billion, nearly a tenth of the $16.5 billion in market value it attained in its initial public offering roughly a year ago.
The stocks of the Internet darlings that have gone public since the beginning of last year - including Facebook and Zynga - have lost much of their I.P.O. valuations, as investor euphoria over massive growth rates dissipated in the wake of real earnings results. The only standout is LinkedIn, the social network for professionals that has seen its shares rise more than 57 percent so far this year.
Groupon stands out for the depths of its fall. The company took to the markets on the strength of its daily deals, what it called a new category of commerce that promised both explosive growth rates and a wealth of consumer data that allowed it to get subscribers to buy again and again.
That premise hasn't been borne out lately, however. The company reported $568.6 million in revenue for the quarter ended Sept. 30, below the low end of its own forecasted range of $580 million to $620 million.
And operating cash flow contracted 35 percent, to $42.1 million.
The quarter did bring some good news. Its $25.4 million in operating income fell in the middle of the forecasted range. Its pro forma profit amounted to 3 cents a share, meeting analyst estimates.
The company's subscriber rolls rose again, to 200 million. And the number of its active customers - those who actually purchased a deal during the last year - rose 37 percent, to 39.5 million.
To offset the slowing daily deals business, Groupon has turned to other services, including selling products directly to consumer. In a statement, the company's chief executive, Andrew Mason, promoted the strength of the business as a promising avenue to rejuvenate its fortunes.
But it hasn't been enough so far to maintain its once-stellar growth rate. Gross billings, which account for the money the company receives before payouts to merchant partners, rose just 5 percent in the quarter, to $1.22 billion.
And its gross billings per active customer fell 21 percent fr om the year-ago period, to $149,000.
Groupon still has a financial cushion: It held $1.2 billion worth of cash and equivalents, with no long-term debt.
In its earnings release, the company forecasted that its fourth-quarter revenues would come in between $625 million and $675 million, promising a growth rate of up to 37 percent.
If the company misses that range again, there's no telling how much worse the run on its stock will be.
