On September 5, 2023, Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp Inc (YELP, Financial), sold 10,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who has sold a total of 791,300 shares over the past year and made no purchases.
Yelp Inc is a multinational corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company develops, hosts, and markets Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, which publish crowd-sourced reviews about businesses. It also operates an online reservation service called Yelp Reservations.
Jeremy Stoppelman, the insider in question, is the co-founder and CEO of Yelp Inc. He has been with the company since its inception in 2004 and has played a pivotal role in its growth and development. His recent sell-off of shares is noteworthy and warrants further analysis.
The insider transaction history for Yelp Inc shows a clear trend: there have been 37 insider sells and 0 insider buys over the past year. This could be indicative of the insiders' confidence in the company's future performance.
On the day of the insider's recent sell, Yelp Inc's shares were trading at $45 each, giving the company a market cap of $3.001 billion. The price-earnings ratio stands at 72.80, significantly higher than the industry median of 21.41 and the company's historical median price-earnings ratio. This suggests that the stock is currently overvalued.
The GuruFocus Value of Yelp Inc is $44.03, resulting in a price-to-GF-Value ratio of 1.02. This indicates that the stock is fairly valued based on its GF Value. The GF Value is an intrinsic value estimate developed by GuruFocus, calculated based on historical multiples, a GuruFocus adjustment factor, and future estimates of business performance from Morningstar analysts.
The insider's recent sell-off of shares, coupled with the high price-earnings ratio, could be a signal to investors to exercise caution. While the stock is fairly valued according to its GF Value, the lack of insider buys over the past year and the high number of insider sells could be indicative of a lack of confidence in the company's future performance. As always, investors are advised to conduct their own research and consider multiple factors before making investment decisions.
