Tiffany Haddish matters.
I am talking about the accidental spokesperson for Groupon (GRPN) , a remarkable comedian, who is a top one percent customer for the company.
I bring her up because when CEO Rich Williams came on Mad Money this spring we talked about how she ignited sales by spontaneously calling out that she's a customer and she loves it.
Why am I waxing about her?
Because this weekend Recode wrote that Groupon might be for sale. I think this is an incredible opportunity, hence why it is our stock of the day on Real Money, because Groupon has really reinvented itself in the last few years and has gotten out of a lot of business lines and focused on local and that's the right place to be right now, of course.
The key thing about Groupon is that it has created a sort of ecosystem that is attractive to anyone trying to establish themselves in the very-hard-to-win local market.
As Williams told me: "We've been on a bit of a tear on the partnership side here lately. And a big piece of it was a couple of quarters ago when we stepped back and we looked at what we were doing, we said, 'okay we know that getting great brands, great inventory, more small businesses on the platform as fast as possible is incredibly critical so why are we trying to do it all on our own?'"
How big are their partnerships? With 50 million people they have a lot of heft. Groupon partnered with Major League Baseball and now they are half the ticket sales for the league.
They affiliated with GrubHub (GRUB) , a millennial favorite to give discounts on restaurant bills. They have introduced breaks to tuition on educational courses. They have become a relatively silent force in the economy.
But because they have scaled back losing businesses you can't see it. You see the revenues go down and you think they must not know what they are doing.
That's simply Williams getting out of low-margin businesses.
I don't think that it's worth a double or more as we hear from D.A. Davidson & Co. this morning.
But a 50% move?
It could be -- and should be -- in the cards.
