Today Groupon reported its first quarter financial performance, including revenue of $601.4 million, and earnings per share of $0.03. Analysts had expected revenue of $592 million, and earnings per share of $0.03. Gross billings for Q1 2013 were $1.41 billion, down from $1.52 billion in Q4 2012.
To recap: Groupon completely tanked last quarter, with revenues of $638.3 million and an unexpected loss of $0.12 per share. Groupon’s net loss in the quarter was a painful $81.1 million.
Unsurprisingly, Groupon is pinning its future hopes on mobile; the company shared that it “had record mobile performance as 45% of our North American transactions came from mobile in March, and more than 7 million people downloaded our apps in the quarter.”
Groupon is seeing slow growth in terms of its active user-base: As of December 31, 2012, Groupon had 41 million active customers. The company now claims 41.7 million — not a promising bump.
Groupon’s Q1 results reflect how well the company has fared in the short term without CEO Andrew Mason steering the ship — Mason was fired shortly after the company reported its Q4 results for the 2012 fiscal year. Following this decision, Groupon rebounded by more than 40 percent.
Things would have been disastrous had Groupon fallen below expectations this quarter, as expectations were already rather low. The future of Groupon is uncertain, but the company has bought itself another quarter to execute on mobile initiatives and show new signs of profitability.
In regular trading, Groupon was up by nearly 4%. In after-hours trading, the company is up 13%.
Image credit: Scott Olson / Getty Images
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