YELP Sell B. Riley

Shares of Yelp Inc

are trading down -2.58 percent on Thursday, after B. Riley analyst Sameet Sinha downgraded YELP to a Sell rating from Neutral with a PT from $21.00 to $15.00 based on 9x 2016 AEBITDA (13x previously). The analyst is lowering its 2016/2017 AEBITDA by 9 percent/2 percent. The company noted that Yelp's traffic of -13 percent q/q implied its first quarter of y/y declines ever, due to increased competition from Alphabet Inc

. Yelp chief executive officer and co-founder Jeremy Stoppleman stated that Google's version of Yelp "doesn't have all the content" and that Google's version is trying to promote its version of the service "because that's where the advertising revenue is for them, but that's not necessarily what's best for the consumers," in an interview on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday. B. Riley sees the company's traffic declining even more in the fourth quarter. Advertising effectiveness may also be less. The firm noted that competition is also increasing in 2016, and as a result could necessitate higher advertising spend. Shares of Yelp are down nearly 63 percent over the last 12 months. Yelp's stock has been down for the last week and a half and the stock has set a new low for the year.