A Fool Looks Back

Updated

Groupon remains a busted IPO, but it came through with another encouraging quarter. The daily-deals leader may never get back to the $20 price that it went public at two years ago, but it's doing everything possible to stay relevant as a leading source of leads for local merchants.

Revenue climbed 8% in its latest quarter, and that's with Groupon scaling back its operating in Europe. North American revenue soared 42%, and margins improved sequentially.

It was easy to steer clear of Groupon when bookings were falling, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the company that has transformed itself from merely a daily-deals provider into a well-rounded provider of merchant services.


Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.

  • Just in case you weren't armed with enough anecdotal evidence that the housing industry is back, revenue at leading real estate website Zillow climbed 71% in its latest quarter. Zillow became the first company to take questions on Twitter during its earnings call, though most of those were from Wall Street analysts.

  • Shares of Dendreon tumbled 15% on Thursday after the company posted an unexpected drop in sales of its flagship prostate cancer treatment. A couple of analysts moved to downgrade Dendreon on the report.

  • Heckmann was downgraded by Global Hunter Securities after posting a wider quarterly loss than Wall Street was expecting. Revenue also came in a bit light.

  • On the beat side, Tesla Motors posted a quarterly profit that was four times larger than analysts were projecting. Tesla CEO Elon Musk also conceded that the company is exploring technology for self-driving cars.

Learn from the past
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The article A Fool Looks Back originally appeared on Fool.com.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Tesla Motors and Zillow; owns shares of Dendreon, Heckmann, Tesla Motors , and Zillow; and has options on Heckmann. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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