Groupon U.S. Deal Volumes Seen 'Ramping'

Groupon Inc GRPN has been trying to become a more real-time marketplace for local deals. Macquarie’s Tom White maintained an Outperform rating for the company, while raising its price target from $3.50 to $5, saying that the volumes of US local deals seemed to be ramping.

Groupon’s aim of moving its model away from a reliance on email and evolving into a more robust and real-time marketplace for local deals seems to be the right thing for the company to do, analyst Tom White commented. He added, however, that “executing on product improvements and driving habitual dayin/day-out consumer usage won’t be easy.”

It would be critical for Groupon to drastically increase the number of active local deals it offers in its core markets, White mentioned.

Local Deals Ramp

Across the 20 largest cities in the US cities, Groupon currently has 103k deals marketed as “Local,” the analyst said. This is up 17 percent since January, and up 55 percent since August 2015. The company has achieved double-digit percent growth in all 20 cities since January.

Taking into account the 50 largest cities in the US, Groupon has ~207k deals marketed as “Local.” White added that 90 percent of these cities had more than 3k active Local deals, with 8 cities offering more than 5k Local deals.

The price target has been raised “on evidence that its core U.S. turnaround is on track,” the Macquarie report added.