By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
Daily deal site slips ahead of earnings report
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Tech stocks pared early losses
Tuesday, but Groupon continued to slide following a surge in price
of nearly 9% Monday.
Groupon (GRPN) slipped by 1.6%, to $6.92 a share. Analysts are
expecting Groupon to report a profit of a penny a share on $762
million in sales when it gives its second-quarter results after the
close of trading.
One of the tech sector's biggest decliners is online coupon
marketplace RetailMeNot Inc. (SALE), which plunged more than 24% to
$19.11 a share Tuesday. RetailMeNot reported disappointing
second-quarter earnings late Monday, including a drop in earnings
and a big increase in expenses during the period. Analysts say the
company has been hurt by changes in Google Inc.'s (GOOGL) search
algorithm, which has affected RetailMeNot's traffic from paid
search results.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney cut his rating on
RetailMeNot to sector perform, or the equivalent of neutral, from
outperform, citing "the major change was the impact of the Google
[algorithm] change" on RetailMeNot's results.
Gains among leading tech stocks came from Oracle Corp. (ORCL),
Twitter Inc. (TWTR), Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and Amazon.com Inc.
(AMZN).
The Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) trimmed its losses, but was
still down by 7 points at 4,376.
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