Yelp Revs Up for a $100 Million IPO

It looks as if Yelp may go public within the next couple weeks. The site — which provides consumer reviews of local businesses — has set the initial terms of the deal: to sell 7.2 million shares at a price range of $12 to $14. Lead underwriters include Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS[1]), Citigroup (NYSE:C[2]) and Jefferies (NYSE:JEF[3]). The company plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol YELP.
When it comes to other hot social stocks — such as Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN[4]), LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD[5]) and Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA[6]) — Yelp has much lower revenues: They came to $83 million last year. In fact, Yelp had a loss of $16.7 million, up from a loss of $9.6 million in 2010. To spur growth, Yelp has been pumping up spending on sales, marketing and product development.
For the most part, Yelp is similar to Angies’ List (NASDAQ:ANGI[7]), which went public last year. That stock has a -5.2% aftermarket return.
Yelp may be one of the few social stocks to go public before Facebook’s IPO, which is expected in late May. As I pointed out in a recent post in the IPO Playbook[8], this mega public offering is likely to create a black hole for the market.
By Tom Taulli | February 17, 2012 11:50 am