In a report published Friday, Macquarie Capital analyst Tom White detailed an analysis of Yelp Inc (NYSE: YELP)'s listings of local businesses in categories where the company launched its "Platform" transaction/eCommerce initiative.
Here are his findings:
Restaurants:
Forty-seven percent of the most reviewed Delivery Restaurants across the 15 largest U.S. cities currently have online ordering enabled on their Yelp pages, marking a modest increase from 46 percent in January.
Of the most reviewed take-out restaurants, Platform penetration ticked down for the third straight quarter to 4.7 percent from 5.3 percent in January and 5.8 percent last September.
In major cities ( Boston , Chicago , Los Angeles , New York City , Philadelphia and San Francisco ) 10.3 percent of all restaurants offer online ordering on their Yelp pages, up from 9 percent in January.
Beauty/Spas:
Six percent of leading U.S. Beauty and Spas have online scheduling enabled on their Yelp pages, up from 4.5 percent in January.
Use of "call-to-action" ads among sampled merchants rose to 20 percent from 19 percent in January.
Around 9 percent of all Beauty/Spas merchants now feature a "deal" on their Yelp page (flat versus January).
Hotels:
Approximately 65 percent of leading U.S. hotels offer online bookability on Yelp, marking a decrease from 69 percent in January.
Including Yelp's entire hotel directory across the 15 largest cities, 27 percent of hotels offer bookability on Yelp (ranging from 38 percent in San Jose to 20 percent in San Antonio
Final Thoughts
Transaction growth momentum will "hinge" on Yelp adding new partner and categories along with better consumer awareness of the Platform functionality. However, transactional revenue to Yelp from Platform will likely remain "small" in the near-term.
Shares remain Outperform rated with an unchanged $62 price target.
Latest Ratings for YELP
Date
Firm
Action
From
To
Mar 2015
Axiom
Initiates Coverage on
Hold
Feb 2015
Morgan Stanley
Initiates Coverage on
Overweight
Feb 2015
Rosenblatt
Initiates Coverage on
Buy
