Stock Market Watch

Yelp Shares Gain on Debut (YELP)

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Opening with a five star reviews from investors, Yelp Inc. (NYSE: YELP) shares gained 65% on their debut on Friday.

Priced at $15, the online reviews site’s IPO was well above the anticipated $12 to $14 per share price range. The pricing is an indicative of strong investor demand for a slice of the 8-year-old company, which has yet to turn profitable


Yelp’s shares gained about $9.80, peaking at $24.80 in midday trading Friday.

According to the Company sources, the initial public offering helped it to net $96 million, after adjusting expenses.  While Yelp sold 7.1 million shares, its charitable foundation floated another 50,000. Investment bankers also have a choice to buy an additional 1 million shares, depending on investor demand. If those shares are sold, Yelp estimates its net proceeds will reach $111.2 million.

Although the company is best known for restaurant reviews, users have also used this website for reviews on churches, strip clubs, hospitals, hotels and high schools.  The company’s revenue is generated from advertising.

Local businesses are main source of the revenue for the company. Generally, these advertisers (local companies) are the ones which users review.

As of the end of last fiscal, Yelp said it had 66 million monthly unique visitors.

Figures provided by comScore, shows that Yelp.com was the 36th most visited website in January.  The company’s website popularity ranking was ahead of Netflix.com but behind ESPN, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The IPO price valued Yelp at $900 million and with Friday’s successful IPO and a stock price jump; the San Francisco Company is valued at $1.49 billion.

 

 

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edliston
Post Written By: Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.


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Ed Liston

Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing.

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