When you say "regardless of track record," what is being discussed Ad Nauseum is whether Groupon has a track record of success or not. This is different than a company that has a consensus track record of success but is battling some unrelated speculation.
It's almost the other way around: Groupon spends $1.43 to buy $1.00 of revenue, but boosters are speculating that they can pivot their model or harvest more revenue from their merchants and email list to make $1.44 revenue from every $1.43 they spend.
Ie: Speculation leads to lower investor confidence leading to pulling out of investments and so on so forth