Billionaire Steve Cohen’s SAC Reports 5.2% Stake in WebMD Health Corp. (WBMD)

As a result, each is a popular short target: 16% of Yelp’s float is held short, and the same figure is 30% for Angie’s List. Yelp has been growing its business quite rapidly, with revenue up 69% in the first quarter of 2013 versus a year earlier, though adjusted EPS has actually been falling on a q/q basis. Angie’s List has seen its stock price rise over 80% in the last year, as it too has been seeing revenue growth of close to 70%.

Bankrate and TripAdvisor are at least profitable, though they too are highly dependent on improving their businesses in the future: their respective forward earnings multiples (which themselves incorporate expectations of significant EPS growth next year) are 24 and 28 respectively. We’d warn investors that Bankrate actually experienced double-digit percentage declines on both top and bottom lines in its most recent quarterly report compared to the same period in the previous fiscal year, which should prevent anyone from buying it as a potential growth stock for now. The online travel industry has been experiencing high growth recently, and TripAdvisor is no exception with revenue and profits growth of 25% or higher. However, its trailing P/E of 42 represents a premium to those industry peers more focused on reservations and so it might be worth looking into those stocks instead.

Markets are being quite aggressive- probably even speculative- in their valuations for WebMD and for many of its peers. It’s good that the company apparently turned a profit last quarter but even analyst forecasts set a high bar for further improvement and we don’t find a stock with a forward P/E of over 80 that attractive, even if Cohen and his team like the stock. A similar logic holds for Yelp and Angie’s List, and as we’ve discussed Bankrate has not been doing well recently and TripAdvisor doesn’t seem that appealing compared to other travel related companies.

Disclosure: I own no shares of any stocks mentioned in this article.