What’s happening: Shares of Yelp (NYSE:YELP) were down 11.2% as of 2:45 p.m. Thursday after Bloomberg stated the local business review company has chose to hold off on chasing a possible sale.
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The San Francisco company might pursue the deal again if Yelp Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman changes his mind, Bloomberg said.
According to the Bloomberg report, based on interviews with people familiar with the matter, Yelp had been approached by several companies but is no longer interested in selling any time soon.
The report comes as the company continues to face slowing subscriber growth.
Yelp has a market capitalization of about $3.1-billion (U.S.). Average monthly unique visitors climbed 8 percent to 142 million in the latest quarter, but that was down from growth of 40 percent during the same period the prior year.
Turning those users into spenders is what advertisers want, and if Yelp could figure out how to make that happen, the company could charge more for its own advertising, as well as get a piece of the sales action.
Yelp’s willingness to explore a sale was reported in May by the Wall Street Journal, a report Yelp also declined to comment about.
Yelp’s stock dropped about 13% Thursday to trade at around $37.00, after closing at $42.44 on Wednesday. Here’s how our Decision Support Engine breaks it down, using many of its independent components.
About 1.5 million transactions were completed on Yelp Platform since its inception in July, 2013, Stoppelman said in April.
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When trading resumed, shares fell more than than 12%.
