Yelp Shares Lower As Earnings Loom; What's The Crowd & Experts Expect?

Shares of Yelp Inc YELP were down less than 1 percent on Wednesday as the company prepares to announce its first quarter financial results after the market closes.

According to Estimize, both experts and the crowd expect to see revenue in line with guidance of $119.5 million. The crowd projects EPS of $0.02 on revenue of $119.38 million, while the Street models consensus EPS of $0.01 on revenue of $119.44 million.

Both these estimates stand well above the ($0.04) EPS registered in the same quarter last year, but substantially below last quarter’s $0.08.

The graph below shows a history of Yelp’s actual results versus estimates:

In addition, Estimize allows users to check out how expectations have changed over time.

While EPS estimates have been pretty much flat over the quarter:

Revenue projections have been consistently increasing.

What Analysts Are Saying

In a recent report, analysts at RBC reiterated an Outperform and fixed an $82 price target. They think the company’s results will meet expectations, despite slower growth in local advertising revenue and visitor traffic.

Related Link: RBC Sees Yelp Slowdown, Reiterates Buy

The analysts add that the company’s strong growth prospects could generate takeover interest from larger Internet companies.

Another article goes over Wunderlich Securities’ comments. The firm said it expects, “Yelp's active account growth to be the ‘key’ that could help the stock rebound. There could be ‘some noise’ from a ‘negative documentary and takeover rumors,’ though Wunderlich said it does not expect that to impact local revenues. Analysts expected active business accounts to grow by 6,000 and local advertising revenues to grow by 50 percent year-over-year.”