Groupon (GRPN) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript
Key takeaways
- Dusan Senkypl: Hello, and thanks for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call.
- Adjusted EBITDA was $12.8 million, slightly below our guidance range.
- Things to Do continue to grow across both North America and international and partly offset these pressures.
Dusan Senkypl: Hello, and thanks for joining us for our first quarter 2026 earnings call. It s great to be with all of you today. Yesterday, after the market closed, we released our earnings and posted our shareholder letter on our Investor Relations website. Today, I will make opening remarks and then open up the call for your questions. For more details on our quarterly performance, I encourage you to read our full shareholder letter, press release and 10-Q. Let me start with the headline. Q1 fell short of our expectations. Global billings of $383 million declined 1% year-over-year, slightly below our guidance. Revenue of $117 million was flat year-over-year and within our guidance range.
Adjusted EBITDA was $12.8 million, slightly below our guidance range. I want to be clear on one item: adjusted EBITDA of $12.8 million includes approximately $2 million of severance reflected in SG&A in the quarter related to the roughly 5% head count reduction we executed in Q1. The pressures in the quarter concentrated in 3 areas: continued softness in our managed and organic channels, which we flagged on the Q4 call; a deceleration in North America local, where SMB merchant acquisition slowed and enterprise turned negative for the first time in 5 quarters and our first soft quarter in health, beauty and wellness after 4 consecutive quarters of growth. Severe winter weather in January and February added a near-term headwind.
Things to Do continue to grow across both North America and international and partly offset these pressures. April performance has improved, driven by North America local reaccelerated. Managed channels are recovering with email returning to positive year-over-year growth. SEO trajectory turned positive in mid-April. These are early indicators, but they validate the work we have been doing on our customer data platform, and on AI-driven content and they give us confidence in the back half. Importantly, none of the Q1 results yet reflect the operating impact of Project Foundry, which I will speak to next. Turning to Project Foundry. Foundry is the most consequential operating decision this management team has made since arriving at Groupon 3 years ago.