[pbreit]

Disagree. Besides that it's not in silicon valley, it made huge progress in a notoriously difficult yet humongous service category: local and small business marketing. It could have remained a tiny player like the 100s of copycats but instead decided to "go for it" by raising lots of money and expanding rapidly (the best use of vc and ipo money). People are much to focused on the original daily deal business (which remains massive and growing) and fail to see that Groupon is amassing an arsenal of valuable local/smb services. For example, it now offers both a cybersource and square competitor. And calendaring, loyalty services, etc.

If the company can continue stringing together solid quarterly results, it should get back to its ipo price and more.

[jerf]

I might agree with you if it weren't for the strong stench of fraud coming off the whole enterprise. And I don't mean vague "I'm misusing the term Ponzi scheme" fraud concerns about the entire business model, I mean, accounting fraud. (And I also mean the term more colloquially than legally. It may be the case that their numbers are entirely legal, but still carefully spun to produce results that mislead people.)

[jordo37]

I am curious about this especially given their most recent 2012Q1 earnings which were solid and I am assuming from what I have read seemed to address the returns loss and other financial issues from previous quarters.