Yelp began trading today on the New York Stock Exchange. The San Francisco based company sold 7.15m shares in the IPO that was priced last night at $15 per share, that makes the total amount raised to $107M. Like the several tech companies went public at the end of last year, Yelp isn’t profitable yet and has high operating costs. It had a loss of $1.10 per share in 2011 on revenue of $83.3M, and 64c loss per share in 2010 on revenue of $47.7M. 70% of Yelp’s revenue come from local advertising and another 21% come from national advertising.But if history is any guide, none of the concerns stopped the recent tech IPO’s from popping chart on the first day of trading. Yelp’s indirect competitor Groupon received lots of criticisms from investors but still jumped 31% in its November 2011 debut, and Yelp opened today above $24, which is more than 60% above the IPO price.
