Yelp Reports $27 Million In Quarterly Revenue But Higher Loss

Yelp is growing and that’s reflected in their numbers for Q1, 2012. The company said that it made $27.4 million in revenue for the quarter, which represented 66 percent growth vs a year ago. However its net loss was more than 3X the loss a year ago ($9.8 million vs. $2.8 million) based on international expansion and investments in sales headcount.

Yelp is now in 80 markets (cities) globally, having launched 11 new markets in Q1. In addition, there now 27.6 million reviews on Yelp.

Monthly unique users grew to 71.4 million across all Yelp’s sites and “active local business accounts” grew to 27,300. I did not listen to the earnings call but don’t believe this figure represents “advertisers” exclusively. I believe this refers to business owners who have claimed their Yelp profiles and are active on Yelp. A subset of this number is advertisers.

In its S-1 filing last year, Yelp reported that 69 percent of its revenue came from local (SMB) advertisers and the rest from brand (national) advertisers. The company expects Q2 2012 revenue “in the range of $29 million to $31 million.” For the full year 2012 Yelp says that revenues should be in the range of $128 to $132 million.

Yelp is up slightly in after-hours trading, with investors generally positive about the earnings and revenue growth. Its market cap is $1.4 billion.