Yelp Inc

Summary (from the latest 2017 annual and quarterly report)

• Total equity : 1.09 billion USD

• Market Cap is 3.17 billion  USD ( the last price of the stock is 38 USD)

• Yelp Inc operates in the online content market based primarily in the United States. It provides a web-based platform and mobile application to bridge the gap between businesses and consumers
• Company has 392 million USD in cash on account (from the latest quarterly report)
• In 2017 long-term debt was zero, short – term debt was also zero (In 2016 total debt was zero)
• Company's revenue increased in 2017 to 847 million USD from 713 million in 2016
• Net income in 2017 was 153 million USD, Net loss in 2016 was 5 million USD

Opinion about the company

Fundamentally it is a good company and in the future we can expect its growth (Total debt is zero, big amount of cash on company's account, ROE is around 16 %).

Yelp Inc operates in the online content market based primarily in the United States. It provides a web-based platform and mobile application to bridge the gap between businesses and consumers. Its platform covers various local business categories, including restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, arts, entertainment and events, home and local services, health, nightlife, travel and hotel, auto, and others categories. The platform assists consumers through product reviews, tips, photos and videos thereby enabling them in making better buying decisions and posting their feedbacks. It also caters to businesses in reaching out to potential customers by providing advertising space. In addition, it also lets the buyers directly transact with businesses directly through its platform. Yelp generates revenue primarily from the sale of advertising on its website and mobile app to businesses and, to a lesser extent, from fees on transactions completed on its platform and subscription fees for its non-advertising products. During the year ended December 31, 2017, Yelp generated net revenue of $846.8 million, representing 19% growth over 2016, net income of $152.9 million, which includes a pre-tax gain of $164.8 million on the sale of Eat24, and adjusted EBITDA of $156.6 million.

• As in past years, advertising accounted for the vast majority of the company's revenue during the year ended December 31, 2017, accounting for 91% of its revenue, as compared to approximately 90% for the year ended December 31, 2016 and approximately 86% for the year ended December 31, 2015

Yelp was founded in 2004 by former PayPal employees Russel Simmons and Jeremy Stoppelman. Yelp grew quickly and raised several rounds of funding. By 2010 it had $30 million in revenues and the website had published more than 4.5 million crowd-sourced reviews. Yelp became a public company in March 2012 and became profitable for the first time two years later. Yelp has 77 million unique visitors via desktop computer and 64 million unique visitors via mobile website on a monthly average basis. By the end of 2017, Yelp has 148 million reviews.

In 2016 Yelp announced it would drastically scale back its operations outside North America and halt international expansion. This resulted in the termination of essentially all international employees across Yelp's 30+ international markets from the sales, marketing, public relations, business outreach, and government relations departments. Overseas employees now primarily consist of engineering and product management staff. Yelp claims these layoffs affected only 175 individuals, or 4 percent of its total workforce.

Yelp standalone subsidiaries and acquisitions :

• Yelp had several smaller acquisitions worth around 150 million USD (SeatMe, Turnstyle Solutions, Nowait, Cityvox, Restaurant-Kritik, Yelp Reservations, Qype)
• In 2015, Yelp acquired Eat24 for about 134 million USD. In August 2017, Yelp sold Eat24 to Grubhub for 287.5 million USD. The acquisition resulted in a partnership to integrate Grubhub delivery into the Yelp profiles of restaurants.

Total =  150 million USD

In December 2009, Google entered into negotiations with Yelp to acquire the company, but the two parties failed to reach an agreement. According to The New York Times, Google offered more than $500 million, but the deal fell through after Yahoo offered $1 billion. Tech Crunch reported that Google refused to match Yahoo's offer. Both offers were later abandoned following a disagreement between Yelp's management and board of directors about the offers.