Yelp, still losing money, files for $100 million IPO
The website Yelp has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to raise as much as $100 million in an initial public offering of its shares.
Yelp: still losing money
The San Francisco-based website provides listings of restaurants, bars and other venues, alongside reviews written by the site's users, said the Wall Street Journal .
The reviews cover dozens of U.S. cities , 10 British cities and other locations overseas. It get its revenue from ads.
The company was founded in 2004 and claims there are more than 22 million reviews on its site and it an average of 61 million visitors a month in the quarter ended in September.
Yelp admit it been consistently UNprofitable in recent years, although revenue has gone up a lot.
Yelp lost $9.6 million last year, and $7.6 million in the first nine months of this year, according to the filing said. The company's accumulated deficit was $32.1 million as of Sept. 30.
Revenue for the first nine months of 2011 rose to $58.4 million, Yelp said, up sharply from $32.5 million a year earlier.
The WSJ said, "That appears on track to fall short of some analysts' expectations. Greencrest Capital, for example, has forecast Yelp's 2011 revenue at $117.6 million."
The company said in the filing that its head count has grown significantly in recent years, and that it plans to spend about $15 million next year on hiring an international sales force and other overseas sales and marketing needs.
In 2009, Google tried and failed to take over Yelp.Another online reviews service, Angie's List , made its trading debut Thursday, with its shares up 25%.