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2023 Barclays Global Technology Conference

Dec 6, 2023

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Trevor Young. I'm one of the internet analysts here at Barclays. I'm pleased to be hosting the Yelp team, David Schwarzbach, CFO. Thanks for making it to the conference. Before I get started, I think you have some comments to make.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah. Thanks, Trevor, for having us here at the conference. We'll be making some forward-looking statements during the conversation today that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information on the risk factors that may affect our results.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay, great. So to start off, we're in a pretty challenging macro environment overall, and yet you've managed to grow ad revenue double digits now for 10 consecutive quarters. Really strong results there, on pace to finish the year in double-digit territory as well. Much of that growth is coming from the strength in revenue per paying advertising location. So what's driving that persistent growth despite that challenging macro?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

There are two parts that I think are really important, why we've been able to perform. The first certainly is that we have an audience that people - that advertisers wanna reach. So our audience, more than 50% of visitors come from households with income over $100,000.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

77% of folks have college or advanced degrees. Many are homeowners, and they are ready to purchase, or they're high intent-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... or transact by the time they get to Yelp. They also tell us exactly what they wanna do, they're typing a query.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So that's a great audience. There's clarity on what they're interested in. For advertisers, that means that we're able to match the right advertisers with those consumers. Also, it's cost per click, so they're only paying if the person clicks, and it's very down funnel, so there's demonstrable ROI. So that has worked really well for us, and through the third quarter, we did see robust advertiser demand as folks have concentrated on their advertising dollars against clear opportunities. So it's clearly been working well for us.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep, and it seems like that's likely to persist despite that macro environment.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

One of the things that we do get as a question is, if the macro environment deteriorates, what's the impact on SMB-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- and consumer broadly? From our perspective, the folks who are advertising, they're certainly new to Yelp.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

They're not gonna be rated.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

They do advertise. But for folks who have already been on the platform, you know, when you go on Yelp, you're still gonna see that star rating in an ad.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So they can't shed their rating.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

The folks who are advertising are typically four- and five-star businesses.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

First of all, the advertising base is stronger-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- than the average SMB.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And then on the consumer side, what we think is, you know, folks have seen significant increase in home equity.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So they are doing projects. They're also college-educated to advanced degrees, and typically, unemployment would be lower among those folks. So that's also a positive. But I think probably most importantly, it's just if you're spending money, you wanna spend it well. Everybody's lived through inflation, and so things are more expensive, so you're even more motivated to make sure that when you're doing that home remodeling project or putting up a fence or going out to eat, that you're gonna get what you expect.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah. Makes a lot of sense, particularly on the consumer side. You alluded to my next question a little bit, just on the paying advertising location trends.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Like the Q&A, Px Q framework. They had been generally up year-over-year in aggregate, while you've been driving that double-digit ad revenue growth. But more recently, last couple quarters, trends there have slowed a little bit, been a little bit choppy.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

And I think you kind of alluded to it before, where, you know, maybe you're getting, churning some of those lower spending, less engaged-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

- paying advertising locations. Just talk us through that dynamic-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

a little bit more, and your comfort around letting these lower spend locations actually turn off.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yes, yes. And we commented a little bit in the shareholder letter and on the Q3 call, but Paying Advertising Locations, we have seen folks who are just not spending a lot of money with us-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- who might have a lot of locations -

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- choosing not to spend anything. That's Paying Advertising Location, right?

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

They have to be paying. So, they fall out of the number, but in general, the team is really focused on the larger opportunity.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So, I just think in terms of efficiency from an enterprise sales perspective, you want them focused where there's the best opportunity. So overall, we're not at all dismayed about the level of paying advertising locations.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We think over the past several years, just the quality has gone up.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's reflected as actually we started out, that revenue per paying advertising location-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

has consistently gone up, and we think fundamentally, that's 'cause we're delivering more value.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

'Cause advertisers are smart, whether you're, you know, have a single truck or you're a big national, if you're not getting return on your ad dollars, you're not gonna spend. And so we think that that's also, in a way, a reflection of quality.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Right? 'Cause they can spend more, they do see return, we're delivering more value to them, they're increasing that spend with us, and we think that all is to the good.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah. Higher, higher quality merchants to have on advertising.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Exactly. And if I can just add-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- between the choice of spending to acquire the next paying advertising location or acquiring the next dollar from an existing paying advertising location, it's obviously much better-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- from a leverage perspective to get that incremental dollar-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Dollar.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

from an existing customer

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- than a new customer.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Makes a lot of sense. Sticking with the PALs a little bit, RR&O, you know, that's been trending a little bit worse than on the service side. Is there anything specific to, like, key verticals there? Like, is it restaurants, you know, aspects of retail, as they're seeing their own consumer pullback? What's driving kind of that differentiation between services and RR&O?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

In RR&O, typically you have the larger national chains-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... whether that's retail or restaurant.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And so those are the folks that we're seeing decide not to spend anything.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Anything.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

They weren't spending much, now they're not spending.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That actually tends to be across the various subcategories within Restaurants, Retail, and Other. Services is just not concentrated. It's not, you know, if you think about national chains, there just aren't that many.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And so it tends to be your small and medium-sized businesses there, and we've continued to do really well in being able to acquire them. You know, we'll get to it, but one of the leverage points for us has been self-service-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

that's been something that's for our SMB channel, and that has been very much around service pros.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's been a positive, and half our acquisition in the third quarter came through that self-serve channel.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Got it. Okay. So just tying the ad revenue piece all together, you know, how are you thinking about balancing growing wallet share versus adding additional PALs over time? You mentioned it's-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

... far more attractive to just get that incremental dollar.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

It's also, you know, just to be clear, it's not that you don't want PALs to grow.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Absolutely.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

You do, but it's kind of a balance of getting high quality, higher lifetime value.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Exactly.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Help us understand that dynamic as we think about 2024.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah, we'd absolutely... Obviously, we want to grow paying advertising locations.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

At the same time, we wanna do it as efficiently as possible. We're incredibly ROI disciplined.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

At Yelp, we measure to the, you know, greatest degree that we can. Just what's the increment? Just like you would expect folks advertising on Yelp are looking at their marginal return on an invested dollar-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... we're looking at the marginal return on an invested dollar, whether it's marketing spend or on the sales side or product and engineering. And so we have a lot of really good projects in flight-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... that we believe enable us to continue to deliver more value, and therefore, generate more revenue per paying advertising location. So we're just-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... we're spending more time there.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We think that as we improve the overall quality of the experience, we differentiate between services, restaurants, retail, and other. We deliver value to those advertisers. That's a great pitch for the next advertiser-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... and also really informs us about, hey, if you're a service pro, let's say you're a plumber, what are the things that are most relevant to you for a customer? And conversely, when we are doing really well, let's say, among plumbers, that's all feeding back into the matching technology.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So we're vertically integrated. We have our own ad tech stack, and that enables us to deliver more value to that existing plumber, and then when a sales rep gets on the phone and says, "Plumbers near you are doing really well-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... that helps them convert if the person hasn't made it through the self-serve flow. So that's all sort of ends up aggregating to the positive.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

That makes sense, and you alluded to some of the work-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

You've done on product, and I wanna come back to that in just a second. But first, sticking with revs, one area of the business I don't think gets enough attention is Yelp Audiences. At last disclosure, I think in 2Q, it was about a $45 million run rate business. How is demand trending there among some of the larger advertisers that might not otherwise have a need to have advertised with Yelp? Have you seen any changes in demand given the current environment, and longer term, should we expect this to become more meaningful part of the business?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

For folks who aren't familiar, we have a product that we call Yelp Audiences. That's where we're taking visitors to Yelp, and we're creating an audience out of that group of folks, and then we are enabling advertisers away from Yelp to use that audience in their advertising targeting.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So it's a retargeting product.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And it is CPM-based. So, and that is really an enterprise product. There are mid-market folks who use it, so it's not an SMB product at all.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We were at about a $30 million run rate in the second quarter of 2022, and we're at about a $45 million run rate in the second quarter here in 2023. It's grown nicely.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

It has been an opportunity for us to both have a broader conversation with existing enterprise advertisers.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So, "Hey, you've been doing well on Yelp. Here's another opportunity for you to take advantage of the audience, on Yelp, but away from us." So that's one thing. We like it, of course, because it enables us to monetize those visitors-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... without increasing ad load.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We like that a lot. It also enables us to have conversations with folks who wouldn't otherwise have a reason to advertise on Yelp, to come and advertise with us, so that could be, say, credit card.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So we have seen interest really across the large national players in the product, and we've been really pleased overall with the way it's grown. I think that product has a lot of opportunity to grow further. First of all, $45 million is truly a drop in the bucket-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... against ad spend for-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... these players. It does tend to be a bit more brand-oriented.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So that is an element, and there's the backdrop on brand broadly.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

But we do brand studies so that folks can assure themselves that they're getting a return on the dollars that they're investing, but we're not yet tapped into all the channels.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... where we could deliver audience. So, for instance, an area that we're continuing to work on is still very, very nascent for us, would be CTV.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We do earn a lower margin on this product, so we're very sensitive to that, and obviously, advertisers wanna be able to pay a competitive CPM for the product. And so, it depends on the margin profile of particular channel, may be less or more attractive for an advertiser to use directly through Yelp.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We do a lot of work in order to both get the best possible pricing or from our perspective-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... to acquire those display units, but also that enables us to be in a position where we can compete effectively with other display ad channels for those advertisers.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So put a lot of work, both in the selling side, measurement side, and of course, the product side.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

It's all really incremental from here 'cause it doesn't cannibalize the base advertising.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Exactly.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

It's getting advertisers that otherwise wouldn't have been on Yelp.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

It's getting advertised off-platform anyway, so it really is complementary of what you have... in the core ad business.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah, we think it's super complementary. And again, I just underscore, for us, being able to tap this audience off Yelp-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Is really interesting.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And, one of the things that we have been spending time on, and again, we'll come back to it, but we spend very, very little on traffic acquisition-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Certainly compared to peers. And so we see a broad opportunity to increase... well, actually really start spending in SEM.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We have had a test budget this year. But just on this theme that there's lots of traffic away from Yelp that we can help to monetize-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- that isn't overlapping with how we're already monetizing is actually very, very interesting.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yes.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Makes a lot of sense. Back to your comments earlier on product, can you talk about some of the product improvements you've made, areas like, you know, Request a Quote, that's helped, you know, drive project volumes improving in the last quarter? What's the product roadmap or strategy that you're working with on Request a Quote to really get that back to positive growth? Because that's a key aspect-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yes

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

- for the service economy.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yes. Maybe just for reference for folks, in the second quarter, projects were actually down 10%. In the third quarter, they were down 5%.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

If people come through a product that we have called Request a Quote, that's where you're gonna go through a series of questions to really refine what it is—what home services project do you have in mind to do?

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's like, as an example, is it pool cleaning or pool lining?

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's a very different service pro-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

between those two. And so we've done a lot over the past several years to optimize that tree-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So that the questions get better. You know, obviously, everybody cares a lot about large language models. We've used large language models to help us to improve the questions that we're asking.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That feeds then into the ad tech stack, because the more information we have, the better we are at that matching. Clicks, actually, despite projects being down 5%, were actually up 9% in the third quarter. So that reflects our ability to both monetize that audience at a higher rate, but it also reflects that click-through rate.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

If you don't present relevant businesses to the consumer, they're not clicking through.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

You don't get the click-through.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah. So when you get more information through Request a Quote, that enables us to do a better job. So of course, we'd love projects to grow, but again, against this inflationary environment, while people, seems like the credit card data says, are spending about the same, if, if things are more expensive, then frequency is lower.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We've definitely seen that, actually, both on the services side as well as the RR&O side, that frequency is down a bit.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Because prices are higher.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

But the better we get at monetizing, we've obviously been able to still perform.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

That's actually a good segue to my next question, which is more on the consumer side. It sounds like for, you know, a year now plus, we've been talking about or hearing about how consumers are pulling back on discretionary spend, you know, trading more goods consumption for travel and experiences, spending more away from home. What are you seeing on the consumer side of the business? You know, I think you flagged pretty healthy ad click growth just a moment ago. That's obviously encouraging, but just wondering if there's any changing dynamics as you dig a little bit deeper on that.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Just to maybe say the obvious, we do report the overall click growth, but if our choice is between another services click, which is only a fraction of total traffic-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- or another click for Italian restaurants, we prefer another services click 'cause they monetize it at a much, much higher rate-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- than restaurant. And so, and broadly, just if you think about the consumers we want to acquire, given that more than 60% of our revenue now comes from services, and we grew home services 20% in the third quarter, we really are lined up around, on the consumer front, acquisition of an engagement with services customers. Now, we like the frequency that comes with restaurant.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

It's a reason to come back to Yelp. We're a broad-based consumer app. You're not one and done after your single project-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

on Yelp. We continue to invest quite heavily, both to make the experience more visual.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We've added video to reviews. Reviews are a great way to drive engagement because people who review obviously do a lot more on the app. But overall, what we really wanna see is that continued performance and engagement from folks who have a propensity to do a project.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Who are those folks? They're typically gonna be homeowners.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

They're gonna be professionals.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

They are going to tend to be more affluent.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And so the better we do at meeting their needs and then reminding them that they could do a search on restaurants, or if they're only doing restaurants, doing a search in services, that's something that we spend a lot of time thinking about.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

So that's how you drive that continued engagement with the consumer, even as they're being maybe more judicious with their, their spend?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Exactly. And so just going back to the, you know, if, as we start to buy leads off Yelp through, say, AdWords, one of the things that distinguishes this for us is that it's not just buying a project-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Certainly, we want that to work economically, but it's also acquiring that consumer who's already the most valuable consumer we can acquire, 'cause they're doing a services project.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

If we give—they have a great experience on Yelp, then we think that they're gonna do another services project. That's a little bit, as I've said before, it's a little bit. If Yelp traditionally has been, "Come for the restaurant, stay for the services," this is very much, "Come for the services, stay for the services, and stay for the restaurants.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Got it.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Got it. That makes sense. Shifting gears a little bit to the margin side, you know, you made good progress this year on cost to revenue leverage. Can you walk us through some of the efficiency gains you, that you've made there? How is that possibly offset by growth in traffic acquisition costs, as we think about something like-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

- outside growth in Yelp Audiences, admittedly off that smaller base?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

And then realizing you're not giving 2024 guidance on this just yet, you know, how should we think about leverage in this line going forward versus those incremental investments in areas such as, like AI?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah. I mean, cost of revenue for us is really low, sub 10%.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

I think that distinguishes us. There's lots and lots and lots of projects under the hood on the infrastructure side that enable us to be more efficient.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Now, it's important to point out that as we purchase ads off Yelp to fulfill for Yelp Audiences, that's something that is an expense there.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So that's a component of it, and yet we've still been able to keep it, basically flat-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

-over the past couple of years, and that's just because on the infrastructure side, we've just continued to make excellent progress and being more and more efficient. One of the questions we do get is for you, as you apply large language models and AI broadly to those experiences, those are very expensive computationally.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

With that, that is true if it's an entirely open-ended query. For us, it's such a narrow query. I'm looking for a locksmith-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

that applying Large Language Models in that context are just much, much, much, much, much less expensive.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So for us, we just don't see a huge potential burden, even as we, you know, look to make Yelp more conversational. We don't see, or we don't have an expectation that that's gonna drive a huge increase in cost of revenue-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... because it's so specific to Yelp. Why I come to Yelp is so-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Narrowly defined. So overall cost of revenue, we think that we can continue to be efficient there, but, you know, as we grow Yelp audience, that would definitely put some pressure there. And then there's still traffic acquisition cost, which is gonna be more marketing expense, but nevertheless, we are increasing that. We're adding about $5 million in the first quarter as we move from what we call testing budget to experimentation budget.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

as we continue to, you know, refine how we actually acquire the right projects.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Got it. Okay. And so then continuing actually with sales and marketing, what is the dynamic as we're heading into the new year? You know, one, with the sales force, you know, is the current size of the sales force its right size, or do you need to flex that up or possibly, you know, streamline that more as you shift away from, you know, local to the more efficient channels, like you mentioned, like self-serve-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

-which has been a big area of focus. And then how should we think about, you know, some of the performance marketing spend?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

On the sales force side, 2020, we did cut the team in half.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We've kept more or less at that level, and that team has been performing incredibly well.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

It took us a while to figure out... We're now entirely remote.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We're remote first, I should say. And so all those folks are distributed. It took us a good year and a half to figure out how to get them to a good productivity level, but we've actually found that by sales reps being able to live where they want to live-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We've been able to retain folks, and especially

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Sure.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

the best sales reps, much longer.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That tenure, as that's increased, has also led to overall improvement in efficiency. So we think that has certainly been the right level. We're very ROI-driven. If we could invest there, we would. We'll give guidance on headcount and for 2024 when we get to the Q4 call. But for 2023, headcount overall for the business has been about flat.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's also true in local sales and even in our what we call multi-location, which is mid-market, and enterprise sales has been about flat. So this is a good tenured team. They know what they're about. We continue to refine the systems that surround them to make them productive, but we're overall happy when you match that or combine that with the fact that self-serve is growing about 25%.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's certainly a product effort, and that has performed very well. People tend to have higher, better retention when they come through and sell themselves on the product, and it's not just about acquisition, it's also about being able to manage that ad spend on the other side. So when you combine all three of those, so you've got the leverage that's coming from mid-market and national-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

You've got a tenured, highly efficient local sales team, and you have continued performance in self-serve. That's enabled us to obviously deliver 28% adjusted-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

EBITDA margin in the third quarter.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And then performance marketing, we think that, we're pretty good at measuring our own spend-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That's something that's enabled us to be very efficient. Also, you know, CPAs have been softer-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

over the course of the year, so we've gotten more for the spend that we've deployed.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We haven't been minding that.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

But again, we'll give a lot more insight for 2024 when we get to the Q4 call, but obviously, it's resulted in what we think are strong Adjusted EBITDA margin, not only in the third quarter, but, you know, we've shared our guidance for the year overall.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah, makes sense. And sticking with that, that good flow through to EBITDA margin, how should we think about, you know, potential further leverage in product dev from here? You've been hovering in this, I think, 18-19% territory as a percentage of revenue on a non-GAAP basis-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

and generating some encouraging leverage year-over-year for now more than a year. Are we kinda at the end of life on that optimization, so to speak, or, you know, will you have to lean back in at some point on that?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah. So Yelp's journey has definitely been this transformation from being a sales headcount-driven growth model to a product-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Product.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

-driven growth model. We see lots and lots of runway ahead of us.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Empirically, how do you know, in the role that I have as CFO, how do I have a sense for where we are and how much runway do we have there? Well, we do a lot of experimentation, and so we're A/B testing the improvements that we're making to the level that makes sense. And when, you know, you're at the end of that optimization road, the wins that come out of those experiments, they decrease, they become quite small, and we still see very meaningful wins out of the experiments that we're running.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Sometimes they're as simple as copy changes.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Sometimes it's the introduction of a new product, sometimes it's changing the flow, sometimes it's the back end and the matching algorithm. It's all of that combined. We still see lots of good wins and lots of roadmap ahead. One of the things that's exciting for a company like Yelp, we've been using AI for almost the entire history of the company, both for content moderation, but also obviously on this, on the matching side. When a new technology emerges, like large language models, we're just super well positioned to leverage those.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

It's not always obvious. Like, people think ChatGPT, and I'm gonna have this, you know, dialogue back and forth, but large language models are broadly applicable. You know, I alluded to a couple of applications before, but just for instance, in your search algorithm, really picking the right synonyms is important.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

And Large Language Models have enabled us to put together a better, more relevant set of synonyms for particular queries. And so that's a very non-obvious, under-the-hood kind of application for Large Language Models.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

But we're really deploying this everywhere across the site, and we actually just transitioned our matching algorithm over to neural nets, and we're applying neural nets broadly in your feed. What do you see? So you just... The more you do, in a sense, and as new technologies emerge, it's almost like it's the ever-receding horizon.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Like, how, you know, how far down. You know, how far in are you?

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Well, we're always about, like, somewhere between the third and seventh inning-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

because it's new stuff comes up.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah. So actually to stick with that analogy, you know, third or seventh inning, you know, you're positioned to end this year around the mid-20s EBITDA margin, you know, probably a bit above where you were in 2021. How far along are we actually in terms of optimizing-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

EBITDA margin? Is there still room for improvement from here?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We definitely believe that there's additional margin potential-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... from this product-led strategy. Now, one caveat, we do have a commitment to lower stock-based comp as a percentage of revenue to less than 8% by the end of 2025, and we have just rolled out to all our employees the what their expectations should be around compensation for 2024, and we're shifting from some of the comp away from equity towards cash. On an equal basis here in 2023, stock-based comp would be down 20, cash comp would be up 20. But I just point out that means that your adjustment is lower by 20-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... between GAAP, EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

You got to take that into account when you think about the margin roadmap.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We've got a certain transition period because it takes a year or two to play out. But again, we unequivocally see continued margin opportunity for Yelp.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

That, that makes sense, and I appreciate you hitting on the SBC piece, because that's one actually we've been getting a lot of questions from investors. So just to be clear, you don't really anticipate a major shift in the overall compensation load. It's shifting from SBC as an EBITDA add back to now it's gonna be cash compensation, so no longer an EBITDA add back.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah. We do think that there will be leverage over time.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Just to underscore something that's quite important, when we say that we had the equivalent of a $20 million reduction in stock-based comp here in 2023.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... people are granted on a four-year basis.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

So you're really saying that we didn't grant $80 million-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- of stock. That is a lot-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

- for a company of our size.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

That means it's not granted the next year, and it's not granted the next year. So we're actually going through a transition.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

It will, it should deliver incremental leverage over time.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... from a compensation perspective.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Okay.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

And that's all kind of hand in hand with your goal to reduce SBC towards 8%-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Correct.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

... of revs by 2025.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Exactly. I would just say by the end.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

End of 25. Yeah. Last one for me before we open it up for any Q&A. Just on capital allocation, you've been very consistent in repurchasing about $50 million a quarter. You're now at a point, though, where annual free cash flow is set to exceed that, so kudos for achieving that milestone. Any updated thoughts on capital allocation? You know, as free cash flow more than fully funds that ongoing buyback. And then similarly, on the M&A front, I think it's actually been a number of years since you've done any sort of substantive M&A. Any thoughts on whether that's an area that's more interesting now that, you know, private comps are probably more sensible than they were 18, 24 months ago?

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

On capital allocation, we are committed to returning capital in excess of a target cash balance.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yep.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Just to explain for a second, the way that we get to the target cash balance, operating cash buffer, and some cash on the balance sheet for tuck-ins.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

I'll come back to the M&A question. And so because it's a target cash balance, as we generate more cash, we certainly have the option-

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Right.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

... the freedom to return that capital, as we stated, is our commitment. So if we can be more efficient as a business and generate more cash, then, it's something that we would look to return. That being said, we do have a team that looks at M&A.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

From a tuck-in acquisition perspective, areas that we would look at are things that could accelerate time to market or enhance the product. We're doing a lot more with photo and video, so photo or video editor could be helpful. Under the hood for the ad tech stack, things like bidders and pacers are things that are of interest to us. So those would be sort of just to give a flavor for the types of things that we would look to do on the tuck-ins.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah, but obviously, coming from a strong capital position to begin with-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

... so tough, tough to argue with that.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Yeah, and I mean, I think we think of ourselves for, for the company that, of the size that we are, we think that we have a fortress balance sheet with, you know, over $400 million in cash and, and no leverage.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Yeah, good spot to be in-

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

We like.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

... 2024. Yeah. With that, I think we're up on time, but we'll open it up to any Q&A if we have any questions from the audience. If not, then we can wrap it there.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Perfect.

Trevor Young
Director and Internet Equity Research Analyst, Barclays

Thank you so much, David.

David Schwarzbach
CFO, Yelp

Thanks so much.

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