Macquarie Is Tracking The Ongoing Expansion of Yelp's Platform - Yelp (NYSE:YELP)

In a report published Friday, Macquarie Capital analyst Tom White detailed an analysis of

Yelp Inc's

YELP

listings of local businesses in categories where the company launched its "Platform" transaction/eCommerce initiative. Here are his findings:

Restaurants:

47 percent of the most reviewed Delivery Restaurants across the 15 largest U.S. cities currently have online ordering enabled on their Yelp pages, marking a modest increase from 46 percent in January.

Of the most reviewed take-out restaurants, Platform penetration ticked down for the third straight quarter to 4.7 percent from 5.3 percent in January and 5.8 percent last September.

In major cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco) 10.3 percent of all restaurants offer online ordering on their Yelp pages, up from nine percent in January.

Beauty/Spas:

Six percent of leading U.S. Beauty and Spas have online scheduling enabled on their Yelp pages, up from 4.5 percent in January.

Use of "call-to-action" ads among sampled merchants rose to 20 percent from 19 percent in January.

Around nine percent of all Beauty/Spas merchants now feature a "deal" on their Yelp page (flat versus January).
Hotels:

Approximately 65 percent of leading U.S. hotels offer online bookability on Yelp, marking a decrease from 69 percent in January.

Including Yelp's entire hotel directory across the 15 largest cities, 27 percent of hotels offer bookability on Yelp (ranging from 38 percent in San Jose to 20 percent in San Antonio

Final Thoughts
Transaction growth momentum will "hinge" on Yelp adding new partner and categories along with better consumer awareness of the Platform functionality. However, transactional revenue to Yelp from Platform will likely remain "small" in the near-term. Shares remain Outperform rated with an unchanged $62 price target.

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs