GOING PUBLIC

Yelp Set to Debut IPO

At $15 a share on Friday.

Online review site Yelp will go public Friday morning, offering 7.1 million shares at roughly $15 each, above the targeted $12 to $14 that the company had set for itself in November. The San Francisco-based company, formed in 2004, will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange and is expected to raise $106 million under the ticker “YELP.” The company is yet to be profitable, having losses in the millions though in the last quarter of 2011 it saw 66 million unique visitors to its site each month. Yelp is said to be in a difficult situation as the company’s traffic is largely driven by Google, which last year bought the famed restaurant review book company Zagat in a move seen to signify that Google was developing its own review site for debut in the near future.