Yelp Prices IPO at $15 Per Share Above Expected Range

Yelp Inc., the online reviews service, has priced its initial public offering at $15 per share, which is above its expected range of $12 to $14.

It stated that it was selling 7.1 million shares in the offering which will mean that it will raise about $106.5 million in the IPO.

Yelp said in its first IPO filing in November that it expected to raise $100 million. It had stated in its initial filing that it had 22 million reviews on its site which was later amended to 18 million after it filtered the rest of the reviews, which were found not to be adhering to its terms of service.

It is planning to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “YELP.” It will have two classes of stock, namely, class A shares being offered to the public worth one vote and class B shares with 10 votes each. The lead book-running manager for the offering is Goldman Sachs.

The company is not yet profitable. Yelp's revenue surged 74 percent to $83.3 million in 2011 though it had a net loss of $16.7 million. In 2010, Yelp lost $9.6 million on $47.7 million in revenue. The main revenue stream for the company is selling advertising to local and national businesses.

It was founded in 2004 by Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, who were engineers at Paypal.