Deutsche Bank Praises Groupon After Management Meeting (GRPN)

Following meetings with Groupon GRPN management, Deutsche Bank released a report to highlight the key takeaways, including:

• The Transition to Mobile - Moving from "push" marketing (email) to "pull" marketing (mobile).
• Improving Selections - New categories and more merchants (54,000 today versus 45,000 in the first quarter).
• EMEA Progress - Customer satisfaction is improving sequentially in EMEA territories, representing further growth opportunities for Groupon.

Deutsche Bank was particularly impressed with the company's growth under the leadership of new CEO Eric Lefkofsky. Related: Groupon Doesn't Want To Be Amazon Or Wal-Mart "Groupon has continued to innovate with a stable and deep bench of executives below the CEO seat, and Lefkofsky's return has been instrumental in focusing the org on a few needle moving initiatives: Mobile, Local, Pull and the One Playbook," Ross Sandler and other Deutsche Bank researchers wrote in their report. "Talent acquisition for Groupon is picking up given the momentum in the business." As far as the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) market is cornered, Deutsche Bank analysts expect Groupon to make significant progress in the coming months. While Groupon managers would not say when EMEA growth would converge and become more like the North American market, Deutsche Bank estimated that this will occur in 2014. Deutsche Bank was also impressed by Groupon's transition from a company that focuses on push-emails to one that relies on "pull" tactics through the use of mobile. "Mobile is a meaningful tailwind as transactions are largely pull and users are the most engaged and have higher purchase frequency of all Groupon cohorts," Deutsche Bank wrote. In other Groupon news, the company announced on September 9 that it had acquired Blink, an app that specializes in finding hotels for last-minute travelers. The company plans to use the app to enhance its existing slate of features for Groupon Getaways. Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report. Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ