I’m not going to lie, I anticipated that Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) would flop on its quarterly earnings report. Instead, the company generated a substantial revenue beat and margins were a lot better than street estimates due to improvements to its SG&A after exiting non-core markets.

Groupon reported revenue of $917.7 million compared to Q4 2015 consensus of $850.41 million, a 7.85% revenue beat. The company didn’t lower its guidance range on revenue, which implies that the company’s management team is fairly confident that even after exiting non-core markets it can sustain its guidance range of $2.75 billion to $3.05 billion for FY’16 with the analyst consensus sitting at the high-end of the range at $2.97 billion. Therefore, revenues are expected to decline by 4.9% between FY’15 and FY’16.

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Overall, I walked away from the quarter partially confused as there’s very little evidence to suggest that management guidance will be accurate. Furthermore, the impact from exiting 17 markets isn’t completely comparable to FY’15. The international comps will likely weaken considerably as we progress through the year, as Groupon’s revenue base in FY’16 will be compared to a year where billings were supported by 45 markets as opposed to the current 28 markets.

Management didn’t indicate that they would exit out of additional markets, so international comps will level out. But among all that confusion there are some silver linings to top line growth whereas margins could improve due to the substantial increase in marketing and order discounts, which is offset by improvements to take rates and reductions to SG&A. I take this stance because Groupon isn’t communicating a strategy to ramp its profitability, but it seems highly probable, which explains the rampant speculation among buy-side/independent analysts when compared to sell-side commentary.

Here’s some of the recent commentary from sell-side analysts:

16E Revenue tweaked -0.7% to $3.05B, while ’16E EBITDA stays flat @$113MM. PT remains $4, based on 7X ’17E EBITDA. Maintain Sector Perform – This was a mixed bag with a few positive/neutral data points (NA Take Rate, Active Custs) and some negative data points (NA Local Gross Billings, Int’l). GRPN is in the early stages of a lengthy turnaround. The core business requires material investment in 1) Growing Active Customer Base 2) Improving Inventory Supply & 3) Enhancing the Core Product. These are not small tasks. — RBC Capital Markets, Mark Mahaney

Further, marketing spend deployed during Q4 showed potential signs of traction, with solid local growth despite reduced order discounts. And while we maintain our Neutral rating on Groupon shares, we will look for continued signals in the company’s marketing efforts (Q1/Q2 weighted) & traction in acquiring new customers ahead of a potential rebound in the back half of 2016 and into 2017. $3.20 PT is based on our weighted average approach (EV/Sales, EV/EBITDA, EV/FCF). – UBS, Eric Sheridan

We are adjusting our estimates to reflect recent announcements that Groupon ceased operations in a number of countries, negatively impacting EMEA and ROW, and lower consumer electronics sales in Goods. We are reducing our PT to $3.50 from $3.65. Our $3.50 PT is based on 10x our 2017E EBITDA of $172M (was 12x previously). Our lower target multiple reflects recent multiple compression for SMID internet names. – Deutsche Bank, Ross Sandler

Flowing through the results, the increased shutdowns in countries announced in the past month, and incorporating updated guidance, we lower our 2016 and 2017 revenue estimates by 2% and 3%. In addition, we increase our 2016 adj. EBITDA est. by 6%. However, given how early Groupon is in its new marketing effort, our long-term estimates are largely unchanged. We maintain our DCF based PT at $3.00, implying a target multiple of 14x 2016 EBITDA. –Morgan Stanley, Dean J Prissman