May. 8 at 8:07 PM
$GRPN Sometimes arrogance and predetermined notions push you into decisions—rational or irrational—that land you exactly where Groupon (GRPN) is today.
Step back and look at the setup. You’ve got a stock that is more than 60% shorted, sitting on roughly 150 million dollars in value just from the SumUp position alone, with SumUp expected to IPO. The real question is not if this stock gets squeezed, it’s whether that move is violent or a slow, grinding re‑rating as the valuation gap closes.
GRPN is trading around one times revenue. EBITDA is moving in the right direction, and on a normalized basis earnings would already be positive if you excluded SG&A the way many companies do in their “adjusted” figures. On that basis, the quarter would have looked like a beat. Add to that: this is an AI‑native, widely recognized consumer brand with a huge short position, trading at a discounted valuation. Where is the real downside in that configuration?
Layer in the additional dynamic: the company has already authorized a meaningful share repurchase program. There is real capital approved to buy back stock in the open market. When you combine that with the short interest and the current valuation, trying to play this from the short side stops looking prudent and starts looking reckless. Sure, you can try to scalp a few dimes with short‑dated puts or weeklies, but that is playing for coins.
The simple math: even with a modest 1-3% drift over the next Q higher or 1ower in revenues and a two‑times revenue multiple, the current price implies the stock is already trading at roughly half of where a basic revenue‑multiple logic says it should be. The easy money for the shorts should already have been taken. From here, it’s a positioning game.
For the longs, the play is straightforward: hold and accumulate while the story, the buyback, and the positioning do their work until the shorts get carried out. I don’t play for coins. I like stacking cash, not folding cash. Just my two cents.
