Yelp Inc Q4 Local Business Account Growth Key Metric

Yelp Inc.'s

growth in local business accounts will be among key advertising metrics watched when the company posts results later Thursday. The San Francisco-based consumer review company changed hands recently at $57.40, up $0.66. The shares are off 24 percent in the past year and are nearly unchanged since November. Analysts expect earnings of $0.07 a share, on revenue of $108.4 million. Yelp in October forecast fourth-quarter earnings growth of about 52 percent to a range of $107 million to $108 million. That's down from the 67 percent revenue growth posted for the third quarter, when its local business accounts grew 51 percent from the year-earlier period to 86,200. Yelp said last month that the Federal Trade Commission concluded a year-long investigation of its consumer reviews and chose to take no action. "This marked the second time that the FTC had looked at our advertising practices and ended its inquiry without further action," Yelp said in a Jan. 6 on its blog site. http://officialblog.yelp.com/