Groupon cutting 1100 jobs, shutting down operations in 7 countries

With closure arranged for Morocco, Puerto Rico, Panama, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Uruguay, the site is looking to cut back staff “primarily in global Deal Factory and customer service”. Last month, Groupon also closed its operations in Greece and Turkey.

The Chicago company says it wants to focus its money on energy on fewer countries.

The company is “doing all we can to make these transitions as easy as possible, but it’s not easy to lose some great members of the Groupon family”, COO Rich Williams wrote. We saw that the investment required to bring our technology, tools and marketplace to every one of our 40+ countries isn’t commensurate with the return at this point. Those have also resulted in some recent layoffs. In April Groupon said it would sell a controlling stake in its South Korean business, mobile commerce company Ticket Monster, for $360 million as part of its turnaround effort.

Chicago-based Groupon, which began as a website offering daily deals for products and services, is facing slowing customer growth and is struggling to add higher-margin inventory.

Most of the company’s revenue comes from North America, with 27.6 percent from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 7.2 percent from the rest of the world. Moreover, the shares face a stiff level of overhead resistance at their 32-day moving average, located at $4.25.

“Substantially all of the pre-tax charges are expected to be paid in cash and will relate to employee severance and compensation benefits, with an immaterial amount of the charges relating to asset impairments and other exit costs”, the company notes. The idea was to help the company grow globally while making money.