Yelp Finds New Chief Financial Officer
April 20 2016 - 9:55AM
Dow Jones News
By Austen Hufford
Yelp Inc. said Charles "Lanny" Baker would be its next chief
financial officer, as the local-business reviews company works
toward being consistently profitable and scales its business.
Mr. Baker is replacing Rob Krolik; Yelp had said in February he
would step down once a replacement was found.
Founded in 2004, Yelp went public in 2012. Like Facebook Inc.,
which was also founded in 2004, Yelp makes the bulk of its money by
selling advertisements.
But, it has struggled to remain profitable -- since it went
public, the company has posted losses in every quarter save a
three-period stretch of profitability in 2014.
The San Francisco company, which last year called off plans to
sell itself, has amassed millions of consumer reviews from
restaurants to dentists, hair salons and federal agencies, but its
results have faltered. At the same time, tension with Alphabet
Inc.'s Google, which once tried to buy Yelp, has intensified as
Google pushes its own listings. Yelp relies on search engines like
Google to attract users.
Most recently, Mr. Baker was chief executive of online
real-estate brokerage company ZipRealty Inc. During his tenure,
ZipRealty was acquired by Realogy Holdings. He had previously been
ZipRealty's financial chief.
He is a director of XO Group Inc., a media company that runs a
wedding services marketplace. Until December, he was a director at
vacation rental company HomeAway Inc.
"His track record of success across the financial, strategic and
operational areas of digital businesses will be an important asset
to the company as we continue to rapidly scale our advertising and
transaction businesses," Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman
said.
Write to Austen Hufford at austen.hufford@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 20, 2016 09:40 ET (13:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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