Yelp Spikes On Strong Results, Local Growth

Shares of Yelp Inc YELP traded up roughly 6 percent on Tuesday’s after-hours trading session, following the announcement of the company’s Q2 results. While EPS of $0.16 may not be comparable to the Street’s consensus for a net loss of ($0.07) per share, revenue of $173.4 million beat estimates of $169.8 million.

For the third quarter, management said it expects adjusted EBITDA in the $24 million to $28 million range, on sales of $180 million to $184 million, above the Street’s consensus of $179.6 million. For the full year, the team said it envisions EBITDA of $100 million to $108 million, on revenue of $700 million to $708 million, once again ahead of estimates for $699 million.

CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said Yelp “had a great second quarter with local revenue growth accelerating to 41% year over year… Our mission is to connect people with great local businesses and we did that through more than 300 million connections in the second quarter – which include mobile calls, clicks for map views and directions, food orders, restaurant reservations, and new reviews, among other actions. In the second half of the year, we look to execute against our three strategic priorities of growing the core local advertising business, boosting awareness of Yelp and driving transactions,” he added.

One final figure that is important to Yelp is local ad accounts, which rose by 32 percent year over year to roughly 128,000. Finally, local revenue growth accelerated to 41 percent year over year, hitting $151.9 million, helped driven by robustness “across the local, national and self-serve channels and improved revenue retention.”

Yelp shares closed the Tuesday session up $0.96 or 3.03 percent, at $32.64.

Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no interest in any of the securities or entities mentioned above.