Monksdream
1 year ago
Yelp Inc NYSE: YELP
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Communication Services : Interactive Media & Services | Small Cap BlendCompany profile
Yelp Inc. connects consumers with local businesses. The Company's advertising products enable businesses of all sizes reach a large audience, advertise their products and drive conversion of their services. It offers a range of free and paid advertising products to businesses of all sizes, which include CPC Advertising (Yelp Ads) and Multi-location Ad Products. Its business page products include Free Business Account, Upgrade Package, Branded Profile, Enhanced Profile, Verified License, Business Highlights, Portfolio, Yelp Connect, Logo and Nearby Jobs. In addition to its advertising products, the Company also offers features and consumer-interactive tools to facilitate transactions between consumers and the local businesses they find on Yelp. The Company offers subscription services, licensing payments for access to Yelp data and other non-advertising, non-transaction arrangements. It sells its advertising products through online, its Website, its Yelp for Business app and others.
New 52 week high
conix
4 years ago
Wokeness is a dish better never served โ but itโs taking over restaurant criticism world
By Steve Cuozzo
August 26, 2020
The Hollywood Oscars went woke not too long ago, and now, so have the so-called Oscars of the Food World โ the James Beard Foundationโs annual restaurant and chef awards. Identity-politics lunacy now rules the venerable organization once devoted to celebrating the great American bounty.
The JBF stunned foodies last week when it announced it wouldnโt announce its award winners for 2020, supposedly due to the disruptive impact of the pandemic. But New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells this week uncovered the main reason: Although some black chefs were nominated, there was none among the 23 unidentified winners.
Never mind that Beard winners are chosen in polls conducted among thousands of food specialists all over the nation.
The JBF wonโt name any winners in 2021, either, to allow the foundation to conduct โa comprehensive internal and external review to address any biasโ and to โalign the awardsโ with โequity and diversity,โ according to a news release.
The joys of food and cooking no longer matter much in establishment perceptions of the culinary arts. Good luck trying to learn how to tell one tomato from another. The discourse increasingly resembles a college curriculum built on โintersectionalityโ and the evils of American capitalism.
Itโs worse: The JBF will tap an โoutside social-justice agencyโ to help it eliminate โsystemic bias.โ
The JBF went into a tailspin after it named Clare Reichenbach as its new chief executive in 2018. British-born Reichenbach admitted having no culinary background beyond her home kitchen, a curious choice to head up the distinctly American institution founded by James Beard, the original celebrant of great American cuisine.
Yet the JBF is hardly alone in embracing the woke catechism. Eater.com recently posted a โsocially conscious shopperโs guideโ to coffee and tea and noted, โOur daily cup owes everything to our colonial, slave-built economy.โ
San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Soleil Ho banned from her vocabulary any number of innocuous words that might be taken as โmicroaggressionsโ โ for example, โaddictiveโ for anything delicious, because it might somehow offend minorities for who knows why.
The most unforgivable sin is โcultural appropriation.โ If youโre a non-Guatemalan who dares to cook Guatemalan, youโre dead meat.
Last year, the well-meaning, non-Chinese owner of a small Chinese cafe downtown saw her career ruined by the woke mob. Eater.com accused her of โracist positioningโ over the wording of an ad about lo mein. The Twitter mob piled on. Her apologies werenโt enough to save the restaurant.
The editor of Conde Nast title Bon Appetit was forced out this year over a 16-year-old photo that purportedly showed him wearing โbrownfaceโ at Puerto Rican-themed costume party. He denied he had altered his face color, but a staff mutiny sealed his fate.
The mob next struck the magโs popular test-kitchen video site over a pattern of โcultural insensitivityโ that allegedly included underpaying nonwhite contributors. Heads rolled. Bon Appetitโs new digital restaurant editor writes that it isnโt enough to talk about โthe intersectionality of food, politics, race, class and genderโ only when itโs โconvenient.โ Intersectionality must be made a primary theme.
The great chef Thomas Keller was excommunicated for calling it an โhonorโ to be named to the White Houseโs Economic Council for Restaurants, formed to support the coronavirus-ravaged industry. There was much chortling when the pandemic forced him to close his Hudson Yards restaurant TAK Room. While Grub Street critic Ryan Sutton was careful not to cheer its demise, which caused โscores of hardworking people .?.?. losing their livelihoods,โ he wrote that it โshouldnโt have opened in the first place.โ
Chefs who are in vogue tend to be political and racial provocateurs. New Orleans-based Tunde Wey, whose stunts have included charging white customers twice as much as nonwhites, recently posted an Instagram essay in which he rooted for the death of the whole restaurant industry for its โracistโ practices.
GQ magazine published a flattering profile of Wey in 2019. The article won an award this year for best media profile from โ guess where! โ the James Beard Foundation. From now on, chefs and people who simply love great food without political axes to grind are just chopped liver.
scuozzo@nypost.com
https://nypost.com/2020/08/26/wokeness-is-taking-over-the-world-of-restaurant-criticism/
msmithgold
7 years ago
Kerrisdale Capital's Long Thesis for Yelp
Full Summary of Long Thesis on YELP
Yelp
Recently retained a long position in Yelp
With over 127 million reviews and nearly 200 million unique monthly visitors, Yelp is a leading and unique local search and review site
Due to higher than expected customer churn, management reset expectations for 2017 on its latest earnings call โ sent shares down 28% after-hours to below $25/share (34% decline in enterprise value)
Considered the price action a gross overreaction to the lowered guidance
Revised forecast gave us the opportunity to buy shares at 2x LTM revenue, 13x LTM EBITDA and 16x LTM FCF
Very unique asset and believe its brand, breadth of content and popularity would be extremely difficult to replicate
While thereโs a perception of Yelp as being a restaurant/bars only review site, that category represents only 18% of reviews and even less so in terms of revenue
For other businesses, such as a local dental office or a fitness center, understanding the value proposition of advertising on Yelp is easier for a variety of reasons
Nearby competitors are fewer, each customer review is more valuable for the client since less reviews are provided for non-restaurant businesses, etc
Being at the top of Yelp searches is similar to the need to be on the first page of Google results
In recent years, Yelp has introduced other features on the site such as Eat24 (competes with Grubhub) and Yelp Reservations, an alternative to OpenTable that allows customers to make reservations directly on the Yelp site and app
Popularity is undoubtedly growing as transaction related revenues grew 28% in the last 12 months
Further engaging user base, increasing the value of the platform to both the local businesses and users
Has the potential to grow well beyond its current base of 143,000 customers
Will grow top-line by 20% in 2017 and sell-side calls for ~$1.2B of revenue by 2019, representing a CAGR of 18%
Applying a 3x revenue or 20x FCF multiple on 2019 revenue/FCF yields nearly $45/share, implying more than 60% upside
Also believe that Yelp has significant strategic value and in that scenario, shares would be worth meaningfully more