NEW YORK (AP) — Online deals site Groupon Inc., reporting for the first time as a public company, said Wednesday that its fourth-quarter revenue rose sharply, but it lost money, and its shares fell sharply after hours.
Groupon's net loss totaled $42.7 million, or 8 cents per share, for the final three months of 2011. A year earlier, as a private company, it booked a larger loss of $378.6 million, which would have amounted to $1.08 per share.
The company said its adjusted loss was 2 cents per share in the latest quarter, while analysts were expecting an adjusted profit of 3 cents per share, according to FactSet.
Groupon said an unusually high international tax rate hurt the quarter's adjusted results.
Its stock fell $2.29, or 9.3 percent, to $22.29 in after-hours trading.
Groupon's revenue was $506.5 million, nearly triple the $172.2 million it reported for last year's fourth quarter. Analysts, on average, had expected $473.1 million, according to FactSet.
Groupon, which went public in November, makes money by taking a cut from the online deals it offers on a variety of goods and services such as restaurant meals and weekend getaways.
The quarter's gross billings were $1.25 billion. That's how much customers paid for all the Groupons the company sold. It doesn't include taxes or account for the money the company paid to merchants.
For the current quarter Groupon expects revenue of $510 million to $550 million. Analysts are forecasting $501 million on average.
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