For the past year, Motley Fool columnist Sean Williams has shared his thoughts on the CEOs that he considers to be the best and the worst across the broad spectrum of industries. Currently, he is rounding up eight candidates per category and allowing readers to pick out the best and the worst, based on accounts of the subjects at hand.
This week, Williams made his eighth nomination for the Worst CEO of 2012, and it happens to be the man at the helm of Groupon: Andrew Mason.
Williams talks at length about his four primary reasons for singling out the founder of the world’s leading deal-a-day site. In short, Williams asserts that Mason has driven Groupon into a quagmire of mismanaged accounts, dwindled stock, lackluster growth and poor market performance.
On the accounting front, Mason has apparently drawn the wrath of shareholders and auditors over numerous company indiscretions. Over the past 14 months, restatements over moneys are said to have led to a halving of Groupon’s 2010 revenue of $713 million. Now down to $313 million, the mistake was allegedly repeated in March of this year, provoking a further loss of $22.6 million.
Another criticism stems from Mason’s alleged inability to distinguish his company within the ever-widening daily deals market. As competitors like LivingSocial yield nine-figure investments, and while the likes of Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft enter into the deal-a-day fray, Groupon has declined in revenue and held lower cash reserves despite a 49 percent share of the daily deals market.
Williams also insists that Groupon has consistently squandered its revenue while failing to grow earnings per share. In its latest quarter, the company turned a measly 4 cent GAAP profit from a 45 percent spike in revenue. These losses have fueled speculation that the deal-a-day model is doomed to extinction in the coming years.
Lastly, Williams hammers down on Groupon’s recent stock performance, which has apparently taken a share price plummet of 82 percent. Given how this mirrors some of the worst performing companies across the spectrum, the columnist concludes that Mason is the world’s worst CEO of the year.
One might not agree with Williams’s choices and assessments, but all of his nominations can be read at the CEO of the Week board, where readers can get involved in the Motley Fool community and ultimately cast votes on the best and worst CEOs of the year.
Read More Groupon Profile
Read More: Andrew Mason
Source: Daily Finance
