Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And I think if you look at the strength of Yelp’s brand and also its value to consumers beyond a single job, I think that gives you some sense of like why we think we can take considerable share in that space over time. We haven’t baked anything into this year. It’s really — this year is about product development and experimentation in that area. But I think in the out years, that’s a really interesting area. And then I would just point you to off Yelp as just another area of investment and opportunity for us. It wasn’t that long ago that Yelp syndication and Yelp audiences didn’t really exist. That’s been innovation that we’ve built in-house and now it’s a rapidly growing considerable business for us. It’s taking a very unique down funnel intent that we see from consumers on Yelp and then it’s reaching out to those consumers as they travel across the web, providing even more value to our advertisers.

So, if you look across the whole host of portfolio, you get, as we do, high confident that there’s growth opportunities in the future and over the long-term.

Colin Sebastian: Great. Thanks guys. Appreciate that.

Jeremy Stoppelman: Sure.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shweta Khajuria with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Shweta Khajuria: Thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, please. So, you talked about services revenue and you gained share in the industry versus peers. It sounds like you want to maintain the 25% model, at least based on the shareholder letter. Would you specifically double-click on what your plans are for the year in terms of driving quality of leads and improving the experience to drive services revenue growth? That’s question one. And the second question is, David, if you could please talk about the cadence of EBITDA. So sequentially, you had some comments in the prepared remarks as well as in the letter. But how should we think about cadence of EBITDA for the rest of the year to get to your full year guide? Thank you.

Jeremy Stoppelman: Hi, Shweta. This is Jeremy. I can touch on maybe the first one within services and monetize leads. Really happy to see the growth there, particularly the growth in home services, I believe that was 20% year-over-year. Great to see all of that activity happening on Yelp. We have a whole host of continued improvements within request-a-quote. One project in particular launching soon will really leverage Yelp’s brand to help give consumers the confidence to engage with request-a-quote in particular. So, we do see really healthy — a really healthy portfolio within our product development there. On the monetized leads question, 25% on had come up a lot over the years. We do think, obviously, there’s considerable headroom to keep making improvements there.

But there’s tradeoffs like we could certainly move that number up, but if the quality isn’t there from a lead perspective, then that value isn’t felt on the advertiser side. And given the really high demand from advertisers right now, we want to make sure that they’re getting a lead that is actionable that works for them, where they feel like there’s an opportunity to drive ROI. So, we’re not rushing to drive that number up immediately. We’re focused on quality as we were last year, but we do believe that over time, that will continue to go up.

David Schwarzbach: Shweta, just addressing your question on the cadence of EBITDA through the year. Once again, in the first quarter, we do see significantly higher expense due to payroll taxes. There’s also a bit of layering in the additional expense of headcount that we hired in the first half of 2022. So, we would expect EBITDA to increase over the course of the year, and for expenses to moderate down from the first quarter as we also move through the year. So that’s the profile that we expect from — in order to deliver the $300 million to $310 million for — excuse me — yeah, the $290 million to $310 million for 2023.