UPDATE: Morgan Stanley Initiates Yelp at Equal-Weight on Valuation

Morgan Stanley initiated coverage on Yelp

with an Equal-weight rating and a $22 price target. Morgan Stanley commented, "Yelp's social user platform, high content quality, review density, and near-zero content costs are key competitive differentiators, in our view. While search engines such as Google have clear ambitions in local, they have so far failed to build active social communities that contribute high-quality, real-time reviews. Daily deal sites have also failed to achieve meaningful content depth, and currently demand a significantly larger share of a business' revenue than Yelp's straightforward, flat-rate-priced subscription offerings." Yelp closed at $19.46 on Thursday.