NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Groupon's investors are skittish -- and they're taking half-bad news as all-bad. The company's second-quarter earnings more than doubled expectations, but investors focused on a revenue miss and punished the stock.
After the closing bell on Monday, August 13th, Groupon reported that it earned 8 cents per share (excluding some charges) versus the 3 cents that analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted.
Groupon's sales rose 45% over the year to about $568 million -- but that still missed the $573 million that analysts expected.
Groupon shares were off nearly 9% immediately following the announcement.
The stock actually ended the regular trading day higher, but shares are still struggling in a difficult market for newly public Internet companies. Groupon shares are down almost 75% from their November IPO, and off nearly 65% in 2012 alone.
Executives will face analyst questions later on Monday. At least one of those questions is likely to be about how the company accounts for Groupon Goods, its relatively new product sales business.
Groupon records Goods revenue on a gross basis. For its other businesses, like coupons, Groupon accounts for them on a net basis -- that is, it strips out the money that Groupon has to hand over to the merchant offering the deal.
Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia highlighted this difference in a note on Wednesday, in which he downgraded his rating on Groupon to "neutral" from "buy." Bhatia emphasized that he thinks the Goods accounting is "appropriate," but when mixed with other sectors of the business it appears to be "artificially boosting revenue growth."
This year has been a rough one for the new crop of public Internet companies, particularly Facebook, whose stock has fallen by nearly half since its problem-ridden May IPO. But Groupon isn't the worst off. Shares of FarmVille maker Zynga are below the $3 mark.
One notable exception to the Internet slump is LinkedIn, whose shares are up about 65% this year. The business networking site reported strong second-quarter earnings earlier this month.
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