Groupon's stock dropped about 30% on Wednesday morning after the company announced in its earnings release on Tuesday that it was changing CEOs. Cofounder Eric Lefkofsky will move to the chairman role, and ex-Amazon ad chief and current Groupon COO Rich Williams will take over as CEO.
But most investors had given up on Groupon long before this latest switch. As the below chart from Statista shows, Groupon shares were already down about 80% from their price at the time of the company's initial public offering before Wednesday's drop, despite a brief rally when original CEO Andrew Mason quit and was replaced by Lefkofsky in February 2013. Wednesday's drop extends that decline to 86%.
What went wrong? The company counted a lot of skeptics stemming all the way back to some unusual accounting in its initial IPO filing, but the big picture is that daily deals turned out to be a flash in the pan: Most businesses didn't get enough long-term customers from them to keep participating, and a lot of consumers burned out on the endless email offers in their inboxes.
See Also:
- Groupon board votes to replace cofounder in CEO role
- If Google kills Chrome OS, there won't be many mourners
- It's not just the iPad — the entire tablet market is in decline
SEE ALSO: Why Activision paid $5.9 billion in cash for the maker of Candy Crush
