Andrew Mason, the Chief Executive Officer of Groupon Inc, wrote a lengthy memo to his employees on Thursday, explaining the website’s daily-deal records and growth strategy of the company. He lashed at Shaw Capital Management‘s report to be “insane” and “hilarious”.
He wrote a three-page memo written with glimmers of humor and frustration. Mason claims that his company is heading towards an IPO that sources try to pin down by September. He protected the use of an accounting metric that dismissed concerns for competition of likes in Facebook and Google.
He defends that U.S. revenue jumped around 12% in August from July. A 20% slide is expected for marketing expenses. This is actually printed on a tech blog in All Things Digital. This information, Shaw Capital Management reports, is also confirmed by people close to Mason.
Mason insists that the company has kept mum over all these insane accusations, but there is a way to brush this off too. Media accused Groupon to have been buying customers through reckless marketing and that he made comments having his competitors small and unproductive.
He further explains that this method is impossible to achieve as subscribers will eventually run out. The truth is the business works harder to create competitive benefits that even the largest technology companies have difficulty in penetrating.
Analysts state that Groupon is slowing down in North America with its IPO plans dented with financial disclosures and stock market slump.
ACSOI or adjusted consolidated segment operating income is a debated measure that excludes stock-based compensation, online marketing expenditures, and other related items for acquisition. The company has dropped this in its latest IPO filing this month, as more customers signed in for email alerts.
The CEO harshly criticized reports that the company was shutting down more than ten offices in China and retrenching hundreds of employees with Tencent Holdings. He says this is really baseless and untrue as China has a different market. However, both companies are earning profits.
