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Renren’s Group Buy Site Nuomi Lost $9.6 Million Last Quarter

Group buy sites, group buy sites everywhere, yet not a drop of profit! Yesterday, we were talking about Tuanbao, but today, it’s Renren’s (NASDAQ:RENN) group buy company Nuomi, which lost over $9.6 million in Q4 2011 according to Renren’s quarterly filings. That brings Nuomi’s total yearly losses to more than $24 million. Yikes.

During the quarter, Nuomi took in over $2 million in revenue, but that wasn’t enough to match more than $11 million in operating costs. Renren itself came out of 2011 with a net profit of more than $40 million on the year, but of course, that number would have been much higher without that dead albatross Nuomi. The especially bad news is that Nuomi seems to be losing money with increasing speed. In the first quarter, it lost $3.7 million but in Q2 that rose to $4.5 million and Q3 saw it rise again to $6.5 million. One has to wonder whether Renren will decide to cut bait here rather than continuing to let its financials get banged up by massive Nuomi losses. Or perhaps, like the Mariner who shot the albatross, Renren will be doomed to wander the earth for eternity, sharing its grim quarterly financials with passers-by as a cautionary tale about why one should never invest in a group buy website.