Yelp Q2 Beats The Street With Top-Line Growth, Narrowing Losses: $32.7M Revenue, $2M Net Loss

Yelp today reported its earnings for the second quarter of 2012, its second ever financial report as a publicly-traded company. Overall, the reviews site showed continued top-line revenue growth and a smaller net loss than it has posted in the past — a performance that bested the estimates of Wall Street analysts.

Yelp’s Q2 revenue was $32.7 million, up 19 percent from the previous quarter and up 67 percent year-over-year from the second quarter of 2011.

The company’s operations are not yet in the black, but the bottom line performance was better than many expected. Yelp’s Q2 net loss was $2 million, or negative 3 cents per share. That’s a big step up from the $9.8 million loss the company posted in the first quarter of 2012. It’s still more than its Q2 2011 loss of $1.2 million — however, that was notably before the company started incurring the costs associated with trading on the stock market. On an adjusted basis, Yelp’s EBITDA was $1.6 million, nearly 1.5 times more than the $649,000 in adjusted EBITDA it brought in during Q2 2011.

Analysts estimated that Yelp would have a loss of negative six cents per share during Q2 2012, so the Street may well be pleased with these results.

Also today, Yelp boosted its projection for full-year 2012 revenues: It now says it should make between $135-136 million during 2012, representing growth of 62-63 percent from 2011. Previously, the company expected it would make between $128 million to $132 million in 2012, so this is certainly a much sunnier outlook.

Here is a graph illustrating today’s earnings as compared to Yelp’s history, cooked up by TechCrunch graphic designer Bryce Durbin:

And here’s a statement from Yelp co-founder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman:

“Yelp’s second quarter performance highlights the underlying power of our model. By focusing almost singularly on cultivating rich, authentic local content, we have created a unique platform that is rapidly becoming the de facto local search engine for connecting consumers with great local businesses.

We are now active in 90 Yelp markets around the world and are seeing an increase in our consumer engagement, especially on mobile, where their connection to local businesses is enhanced by the location-based capabilities of their mobile devices.”