Yelp Still Looks Pricey Despite Its Mobile And Global Growth

Yelp (NYSE:YELP) has been expanding aggressively into Europe in the past few months. It not only launched in Poland recently, but backed that up by acquiring its European competitor – Qype for nearly $50 million. The company announced its Q3 results on November 1 and reported a solid 63 percent jump in net revenues y-o-y with Q3 revenues coming in at $36.4 million. Cumulative reviews grew 49 percent y-o-y to more than 33 million, with average unique monthly visitors growing by 37 percent to 84 million.

Active local business accounts grew 82 percent y-o-y to approximately 35,500. The company also provided guidance for Q4 and FY 2012, stating that net revenues will be in the range of $40 – $40.5 million with an adjusted EBITDA of $1.25-$1.5 million. For the full year, it expects net revenue to be in the range of $136.4  – $136.9 million and adjusted EBITDA is expected to be in the range of $3.5 – $4.0 million, which excludes a one-time charge of $1 million related to the Qype acquisition. ^[1]

The company reported a net loss of $2.0 million or $0.03 per share, compared to a net loss of $3.8 million, or $0.24 per share y-o-y. Apart from launching in Poland and Singapore, the most notable business development was the launch of its gift certificates business where a local business can sell gift certificates directly to consumers through their Yelp profile.

We have a $12.20 Trefis Price estimate for Yelp, which is significantly below its current market price. We explain our analysis and why it is below the current market price here.

Check out our complete analysis of Yelp

Mobile Monetization Key As Yelp Expands Internationally

Yelp is focusing on leveraging its growing user base via its mobile app. It has nearly 8.2 million monthly unique mobile users and has integrated its services into Siri and the new Apple Maps application on iOS 6. Yelp is “rapidly becoming a de facto search engine” as users prefer Yelp over other search options, when it comes to reviews.

Mobile penetration is high, with almost 45 percent of all searches occurring on mobile and 50 percent of photos contributed by users are also from mobile phones. Currently it does not run any ads on its mobile app and we can expect significant revenues from the mobile app in the future. It does show ads on the mobile web page of Yelp, which has been redesigned to be mobile-centric. Yelp currently operates in ~90 cities with Q3 witnessing launches in new markets including international markets of such as Singapore and Poland.

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1. Yelp SEC filings, www.sec.gov, Nov 1, 2012 [↩]