I think Groupon could have been more conservative in how they described their financial statements. However, it's a huge stretch to call them dishonest. As a

I think Groupon could have been more conservative in how they described their financial statements. However, it's a huge stretch to call them dishonest. As a commenter put it here: "They were forced into accounting that Priceline hasn't been forced into in 15 years. Accounting that, I might add, provides no real additional visibility into the business. Now, it's a high-margin business with 1/2 the revenue it had before. Then it was a meh margin business with about 2x the revenues. This is not the SEC doing us any favors. It's rearranging chess pieces." http://allthingsd.com/20110923/more-groupon-amends-its-s-1-ipo-filing-again-over-accounting-issues/ http://allthingsd.com/20110923/more-groupon-amends-its-s-1-i... Given the media scrutiny on this, it's clear now that Groupon should have made this adjustment earlier, and referred to their full pass-through revenue as "gross billings" instead of "gross revenue". That would have been the most conservative way to describe their numbers. Still, it's a big stretch to call this dishonest. It was definitely not conservative labeling. But all the numbers were clearly disclosed, and the labels clearly described. If you read the S-1, it was very clear how their financials worked. The problem is that this is getting so much media attention that people aren't reading the S-1, and are getting their information from the media.