Groupon has existed for more than three years as a company and less than 18 months as a publicly traded firm. Today, investors are dropping the company's stock like it’s hot—except by "hot," we mean "toxic."

The Chicago-based daily deals site saw its stock fall by 25 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday, plunging as a result of continuing disappointing financial numbers.

The company announced that it had booked a loss of $81.1 million, or 12 cents per share, during the fourth-quarter of 2012. That’s a notably worse dive than Groupon’s Q4 2011, when it lost $65.4 million. (By comparison, the company lost $3 million in Q3 2012.) In short, Groupon is spending more, and it's losing more doing it, too.

By the opening bell on Thursday, the stock began its slow rise back up. As of this writing, the stock is trading at around $4.83 per share, down about 19 percent since the close of trading the previous day.

“Stock performance in 2013 will likely depend on Groupon’s ability to improve execution and cost structure of its European business, demonstrate stable growth and take rates in its local deal business, increase Groupon Goods gross margins, and provide investors with comfort regarding long term gross margins,” Justin Post, an analyst at Merrill Lynch, wrote in an investors’ note.

“For now we have low confidence that the company can deliver consolidated segment operating income growth in 2013 given the mix shift to the lower margin goods business and we expect gross profit to be down double-digits in 1Q,” Post wrote.

A silver lining?

Still, the Associated Press reports that “the company’s gross billings, a closely watched figure that shows the total amount customers spent on Groupon’s deals, increased 24 percent in the quarter to $1.52 billion from $1.23 billion a year earlier.”

So how does the company plan on turning things around? In its latest 10-K annual report, published on Wednesday, Groupon says it wants to grow its customer base (of course), particularly by using merchants more than once, expanding to international customers, and enhancing its mobile offerings.

But Groupon still has a long way to go.

“We had an accumulated deficit of $753.5 million as of December 31, 2012,” the report states.

“We anticipate that our profitability will be impacted as we continue to invest in our growth, through increased spending in some areas and through accepting a lower percentage of the proceeds from our deals, as we attempt to add more merchant partners to our marketplace. These efforts may prove more difficult than we currently anticipate, and we may not succeed in realizing the benefits of these efforts in a short time frame, or at all.”

(Suddenly, the Oatmeal seems more prescient than ever.)