UPDATE: Northland Securities Downgrades Groupon; Lowers Price Target

In a note released Wednesday, Northland Securities analyst Darren Aftahi downgraded Groupon, Inc.

from Outperform to Market perform and lowered the price target from $12 to $7. Afhati explained the downgrade is due to worries that the company's guidance assumes a "rather aggressive" 2H14 EBITDA. Afhati notes that this will be challenging to achieve without "meaningful progress" in both Local growth and Goods margins. To conclude Afhati commented, "we wait to see if local growth can parallel mobile growth, as well as if the company can start to improve its Goods margins in 2Q and beyond." At market open shares of Groupon were trading around ~$5.94 down from yesterday's closing price of $6.72.