Yelp IPO: $100 Million to Be Sought in Early Public Offering
Yelp, Inc. is hoping to raise as much as $100 million in its first initial public offering slated to take place later this year.
Yelp first filed for an IPO this past November and is set to go public the New York Stock Exchange on March 2.
The company serves as a user-driven social networking, user review, and local search site. It has around 25 million reviews of local salons, restaurants, dentists, and veterinarians. Yelp boasts of around 66 million unique visitors per month and has expanded its reach by developing the site abroad.
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The company has international sites for France, Spain, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.
"The initial valuation seems high relative to their peers. I'm not sure where their huge growth catalyst is going to come from," Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago, told Business Week.
The company filed with the Securities Exchange Commission in November of 2011 and announced that it would be offering its shares at a price range of $12.00 to $14.00. It is planning to sell 7.1 million shares in the IPO.
The news of Yelp, Inc. planning to go public comes after another Internet giant; Facebook, grabbed headlines for filing its own IPO on Feb. 1.
Facebook's IPO could raise the company's value to as high as $75 to $100 billion and is set to occur in May 2012.
"We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time as the size of our active user base increases, and as we achieve higher market penetration rates," Facebook wrote in its 150-page S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"To the extent that our active user rate slows, our business performance will become increasingly depended on our ability to increase levels of user engagement in current and new markets," the company added.
