Will a New Groupon CFO Help Investors Get Past Revenues?

Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN) has turned into an unloved deals site by investors, but the company is giving some news that it remains relevant to consumers here. What if all Groupon needs is another weaker economy to get its spate of deals popular again?

Revenue was $732 million in its first quarter, which was down less than 1% if you exclude the currency impact of foreign exchange. Adjusted EBITDA was $31.3 million in the first quarter, with operating earnings coming in at a slight loss at -$0.01 per share. The consensus  estimates were said to be roughly $718 million in revenue, roughly $21.57 million in adjusted EBITA, and -$0.02 EPS.

For all of 2016, Groupon continues to expect revenues to come in a range of $2.75 to $3.05 billion. It also increased its adjusted EBITDA range for 2016, up to $85 to $135 million from $80 to $130 million. Thomson First Call has estimates of $3.01 billion in revenues for 2016.

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An Additional bit of news may be an incremental positive here. Groupon said that it has now named Mike Randolfi as its new Chief Financial Officer. Randolfi most recently served as CFO of Orbitz Worldwide into its merger with Expedia. Groupon’s tagline said that the e-commerce veteran joins the company to help build the daily habit in local commerce. Randolfi will oversee the areas around accounting, financial planning and analysis, investor relations, tax, procurement, internal audit and treasury operations.

Global gross billings were $1.47 billion in the first quarter, down about 3% excluding the currency impacts of foreign exchange. Groupon’s release showed that it did see expected impacts from continued restructuring efforts, from exiting countries, and focusing on what it called ‘reducing empty calorie growth.’

North America was the bright spot here. Revenue rose 4% and gross billings grew by 5%, based upon 6% growth in total units. Groupon also said that it added nearly 1 million active customers in the quarter to end with a total of 26.9 million active customers in North America. It also said that it more than doubled active deals in North America from the first quarter of 2015 to more than 425,000 in North America alone.

Will Groupon’s strategic priorities make this a growth empire again? That remains to be seen, but this was represented as investing in customer growth, streamlining and simplifying operations, reducing those so-called empty calories (i.e. worthless revenues), and building a better customer experience.

Groupon shares closed down 3.9% at $4.43 in the regular trading session, and the stock was down 1.1% at $4.38 in the after-hours session. Its pre-news consensus analyst price target is $3.74 and its 52-week range is $2.15 to $7.19. Groupon’s market cap at the closing bell was $2.56 billion.

Maybe this is just what a good quarter is supposed to look like for Groupon now.