Analysts at Barrington Research reiterated their Outperform rating on Groupon Inc (NASDAQ:GRPN) in a research note issued to investors on Monday. The price target on the stock has been increased from $8 to $9 per share.
Groupon transitions to a mobile company
“Groupon is poised to continue reaccelerating growth and profitability given the aforementioned reasons as well as its recognizable brand and market share advantage,” the analysts said in their report.
As witnessed during the Analyst Day, Groupon is making progress to become a proper online marketplace from its previous business model of a daily deals email company, the analysts said. Along with generating demand, the company is now fulfilling those demands through a broad selection of deals available on its marketplace, which was launched in November 2012.
The analysts are confident that the company is also driving ahead its international operations. Groupon is shifting toward mobile platforms such as mobile email, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), direct, affiliate, display, free referral, managed social, and paid user referrals, which they say is a good sign.
Opportunity to grow domestic local billing
Groupon saw growth in its domestic market, with local billings growing 10% year over year, an increase from the previous quarter’s 2%. Search increased transactions to 24% from 9% previous year’s quarter. Previously, Groupon’s management said that the percentage of traffic from search was 10%. Analysts think that there is a substantial opportunity for the company to drive ahead the conversion rate of its 77 million unique domestic visitors with the help of refined yield management for real-time deals, enhanced mobile functionality, improved customer acquisition, and better merchant loyalty.
Recently a number of analysts have assigned ratings to Groupon. Goldman Sachs analysts increased their price target to $8 in a research note to investors on Nov. 12 and have assigned a Neutral rating to the stock. Analysts at Sterne Agee maintained a Buy rating on the stock in another research note to investors on Nov. 12 and assigned it a price target of $7.88. Bank of America analysts maintained a Neutral rating on the stock and assigned a price target of $7.50 from $8 previously. Groupon presently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $8.55.
