Dusan Senkypl - Co-Founder of Pale Fire Capital
- Appointed Interim CEO, Effective Immediately
Focus On Operational Excellence to Unlock
Groupon’s Potential
Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN), a leading destination for local
services & experiences, announced that its Board of Directors
(Board) has appointed Dusan Senkypl, co-founder of Pale Fire
Capital and a member of the Board, to the role of interim Chief
Executive Officer, effective immediately. Mr. Senkypl, who will be
based in the Czech Republic, will remain on the Groupon Board of
Directors. Mr. Senkypl succeeds Kedar Deshpande, who has stepped
down as CEO and Director of Groupon and will serve as an advisor to
the company for 60 days to aid in a smooth transition.
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the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230330005803/en/
Dusan Senkypl, co-founder of Pale Fire
Capital and a member of the Groupon Board of Directors, has been
appointed to the role of Groupon's interim Chief Executive Officer,
effective immediately. (Photo: Business Wire)
“Dusan is a proven leader and operator and his experiences
leading transformations, building successful internet products and
helping grow a marketplace similar to Groupon uniquely position him
to step in as our interim CEO at this critical time,” said Ted
Leonsis, Chairman of the Groupon Board of Directors. “Since he
joined the Board, Dusan has been very engaged as a director,
providing important oversight on Groupon’s strategy and strengths
and helping the company identify areas in need of improvement.
Given this, we believe that he will seamlessly transition into this
new leadership role and help the company execute against and
continue to refine the supply-led transformation strategy we
announced during our fourth quarter earnings call. The Board is
focused on accelerating Groupon’s transformation and we are
confident that Dusan can help us reach this important goal. We are
very excited to see the progress the company can make this year
with Dusan as interim CEO.”
“I have a deep appreciation for the dedication that has gone
into building this company and am honored to guide Groupon through
its transformation and turnaround,” said Mr. Senkypl. “With unique
local inventory, over 14 million active local customers and
millions of visitor sessions per month, Groupon has valuable assets
capable of fueling significant growth when paired with operational
excellence. I am excited to build on that foundation to further
scale the company’s marketplace and drive increased value for all
stakeholders. I have built multiple businesses from the ground up
that operated at scale with hundreds of millions of users, and I
believe I know what we need to do at Groupon to take the company to
the next level.”
Mr. Senkypl added, “After the January restructuring announcement
and with the recent amendment to our credit facility, the company
has a solid financial foundation to support our transformation this
year. From my perspective, Groupon has a clear target environment
where the business can compete and win. Our vision is to become the
ultimate destination for local services and experiences, a
marketplace where trust and value are core to our consumer and
merchant value propositions. We operate in a large and attractive
market and Groupon is uniquely positioned to extend its market
leadership. I believe that we have the right assets in place to
transform, but we need to do a much better job of incorporating
operational excellence into everything we do. We are taking steps
to ensure that we have the strong management team and operating
systems in place to empower Groupon to make bolder decisions more
quickly and ensure that our global team has the utmost clarity on
our initiatives and goals. As we improve our execution by following
a comprehensive transformation plan, I believe we can increase the
value we deliver to our customers and merchant partners, and return
the company to growth. I look forward to working closely with the
Board and the talented team at Groupon to delight customers, help
hard working merchant-partners grow their businesses and build an
enduring brand and category leader.”
“It has been a tremendous honor to serve as the CEO of Groupon
and I am proud of the goals our team has accomplished together,
including a significant reduction of our fixed cost structure. I
look forward to watching the company continue to transform into the
ultimate destination for local services and experiences under
Dusan’s leadership,” said Kedar Deshpande.
About Dusan Senkypl
Dusan Senkypl is joining Groupon from Pale Fire Capital,
Groupon’s largest shareholder that holds nearly 22% of shares
outstanding. Pale Fire is an entrepreneurial investment firm with
~$1 billion in AUM and two established investment strategies in
technology private equity and global macro hedge fund. Its private
equity portfolio includes ~30 B2C and marketplace companies. Dusan
co-founded Pale Fire Capital in 2015 and serves as Chairman and
CEO. In conjunction with his appointment to Groupon CEO, Dusan will
be stepping down from day-to-day responsibilities at Pale Fire
Capital.
Dusan is an entrepreneur by trade. Prior to Pale Fire, Dusan
created several global ecommerce and technology projects used by
more than 250 million of users. He built ePojisteni.cz and
NetBrokers Holding, a dominant fintech player with more than 500
employees, which was bought by German media group Bauer Media in
2018. He enjoys sports and dedicates a portion of his time to
non-profit projects.
About Groupon
Groupon (www.groupon.com) (NASDAQ: GRPN) is a trusted local
marketplace where consumers go to buy services and experiences that
make life more interesting and deliver boundless value. To find out
more about Groupon, please visit
https://about.groupon.com/press.
Forward Looking Statements
The statements contained in this release that refer to plans and
expectations for the next quarter, the full year or the future are
forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the
Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements
regarding our future results of operations and financial position,
business strategy and plans and our objectives for future
operations and future liquidity. The words "may," "will," "should,"
"could," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "intend,"
"continue" and other similar expressions are intended to identify
forward-looking statements. We have based these forward looking
statements largely on current expectations and projections about
future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our
financial condition, results of operations, business strategy,
short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and
financial needs. These forward-looking statements involve risks and
uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ
materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking
statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not
limited to, our ability to execute, and achieve the expected
benefits of our go-forward strategy; execution of our business and
marketing strategies; volatility in our operating results;
challenges arising from our international operations, including
fluctuations in currency exchange rates, legal and regulatory
developments in the jurisdictions in which we operate and
geopolitical instability resulting from the conflict in Ukraine;
global economic uncertainty, including as a result of inflationary
pressures, ongoing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and labor and
supply chain challenges; retaining and adding high quality
merchants and third-party business partners; retaining existing
customers and adding new customers; competing successfully in our
industry; providing a strong mobile experience for our customers;
managing refund risks; retaining and attracting members of our
executive and management teams and other qualified employees and
personnel; customer and merchant fraud; payment-related risks; our
reliance on email, internet search engines and mobile application
marketplaces to drive traffic to our marketplace; cybersecurity
breaches; maintaining and improving our information technology
infrastructure; reliance on cloud-based computing platforms;
completing and realizing the anticipated benefits from
acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and strategic
investments; lack of control over minority investments; managing
inventory and order fulfillment risks; claims related to product
and service offerings; protecting our intellectual property;
maintaining a strong brand; the impact of future and pending
litigation; compliance with domestic and foreign laws and
regulations, including the CARD Act, GDPR, CPRA, other
privacy-related laws and regulation of the Internet and e-commerce;
classification of our independent contractors, agency workers or
employees; our ability to remediate our material weakness over
internal control over financial reporting; risks relating to
information or content published or made available on our websites
or service offerings we make available; exposure to greater than
anticipated tax liabilities; adoption of tax laws; our ability to
use our tax attributes; impacts if we become subject to the Bank
Secrecy Act or other anti-money laundering or money transmission
laws or regulations; our ability to raise capital if necessary; our
ability to continue as a going concern; risks related to our access
to capital and outstanding indebtedness, including our convertible
senior notes; our common stock, including volatility in our stock
price; our ability to realize the anticipated benefits from the
capped call transactions relating to our convertible senior notes;
difficulties, delays or our inability to successfully complete all
or part of the announced restructuring actions or to realize the
operating efficiencies and other benefits of such restructuring
actions; higher than anticipated restructuring charges or changes
in the timing of such restructuring charges; and those risks and
other factors discussed in Part I, Item 1A. "Risk Factors" of our
Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022,
and our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission
(the "SEC"), copies of which may be obtained by visiting the
company's Investor Relations web site at investor.groupon.com or
the SEC's web site at www.sec.gov. Groupon's actual results could
differ materially from those predicted or implied and reported
results should not be considered an indication of future
performance.
You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as
predictions of future events. Although Groupon believes that the
expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are
reasonable, it cannot guarantee that the future results, levels of
activity, performance or events and circumstances reflected in the
forward-looking statements will be achieved or occur. Moreover,
neither Groupon nor any other person assumes responsibility for the
accuracy and completeness of the forward-looking statements. The
forward-looking statements reflect our expectations as of the date
of this release. We undertake no obligation to update publicly any
forward looking statements for any reason after the date of this
release to conform these statements to actual results or to changes
in our expectations.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230330005803/en/
Investor Relations Contacts: Jennifer Beugelmans Megan Petrous
ir@groupon.com
Media Relations Contacts: Nick Halliwell Alia Lewis
press@groupon.com
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