By Katie Lobosco @KatieLobosco August 7, 2013: 5:37 PM ET
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| Groupon quarterly sales jumped 7% as the company gained traction in mobile. |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Don't completely write off the daily deals website Groupon just yet.
Shares of Groupon (GRPN) soared 20% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the company reported better-than-expected quarterly sales. The company's board also officially offered Eric Lefkofsky the CEO job after filling in for ousted founder Andrew Mason on an interim basis since February.
Also boosting the stock was Groupon's announcement that it will repurchase $300 million of its own shares over the next two years.
The company had its "strongest quarter ever in North America," said Lefkofsky in a prepared statement. This was due, in part, to a 30% increase in the total value of purchases of goods and services made by customers in North America -- a closely analyzed figure.
The deals site also performed well in mobile. Nearly 50% of North American transactions were completed on mobile devices in June, up from 30% during the same month last year.
Overall, Groupon said it brought in $608.7 million in sales during the second quarter, a 7% increase year-over-year. That beat the $606.2 million median forecast of Wall Street analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
The company said it lost $7.6 million in the quarter, but excluding one-time charges totaling 3 cents per share, Groupon said it earned 2 cents per share. That's in line with the median forecasts of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters, who typically exclude one-time items from their estimates.
Although the stock has been on the upswing during the past year, rising 79% in 2013, shares of Groupon have lost nearly a third of their value since November 2012, when the company announced dismal quarterly earnings. Months after that, the company fired Mason as its CEO.
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