It’s not cheap offering the internet daily deals, it seems. The most popular daily deals site, Groupon, has suffered a $103 million loss for the second quarter of 2011 alone, according to financial statements the company has submitted to the SEC.
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The loss follows a change in the way Groupon reports its financial details; previously, investors and analysts had been concerned that the complicated, “hairy” way in which the company announced financial details was obscuring important information. Bloomberg quotes a New York analyst as being pleased with the change because it “eases my concerns from the point of view of the company hiding information from me,” although he adds that he is “still not as happy as I would like to be with the numbers themselves.”
That might be because, despite sales increasing tenfold over Q2 last year, the losses also increased dramatically; Q2 2010’s loss was only $35.9 million.
Nonetheless, revenue for the company is also said to be increasing, up $2 on each coupon sold in the first half of the year from $23 to $25, with the company making $18 on average from each of its 115.7 million subscribers between January and June. Asked to comment on the losses, Groupon spokesman Joe Carberry said, “The filing will have to speak for itself.”
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Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.