Investing.com -- Shares in Yelp plunged nearly 15% in after-hours trading after it failed to meet analysts' forecasts with its first quarter earnings released on Wednesday.
During the first quarter, Yelp posted a loss of 0.02 earnings per share on $119 million in revenues -- below estimates of a gain of 0.01 EPS for the period. The San Francisco-based multi-national corporation, which publishes crowd source reviews on local businesses also fell short of forecasts of $120 million in revenues during the quarter.
In terms of unique monthly mobile users, Yelp reported a 29% increase to 79 million. Still, Yelp also experienced a 3% decline in desktop users to 80 million.
"We are excited about our start to the year as we've made significant progress on our key initiatives for 2015," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman said in a statement. "In the first quarter, we acquired Eat24 to drive daily usage and improved utility of Yelp and added partners in five additional verticals of Yelp Platform.
Yelp expects to earn revenue between $131 and $134 million for the current quarter leading to annual revenue of $574 to $579 million for the year as a whole.
"Looking to the rest of the year, we will continue to seek ways to increase engagement and drive awareness, while striving to demonstrate the value we can deliver to local businesses in order to capture the large local advertising market opportunity."
Shares in Yelp fell 7.71 points or 15.04% to 43.57 in after-hours trading.