Consumer review website operator Yelp (YELP) reported an unexpected second-quarter profit and raised its full-year revenue forecast as investments in sales and marketing led to more businesses and consumers signing up for its services.
The company’s shares rose more than 8% in extended trading. They hit a 52-week high in regular trading on Tuesday.
Yelp posted a net profit of $449,000, or one cent per share, for the three months ended June 30, compared with a net loss of $1.3 million, or two cents per share, a year earlier.
Analysts were expecting a loss of seven cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.
Yelp, whose website and app allow users to rate restaurants and a variety of other businesses, said net revenue rose 29.5% to $173.4 million.
Analysts were expecting revenue to increase to $169.8 million.
Yelp has been spending heavily to stay competitive in a market that includes everyone from heavyweights such as Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) to smaller rivals such as GrubHub (GRUB) and start-ups like TaskRabbit.
That helped Yelp’s local advertising accounts increase 32% to 128,000 in the quarter, roughly in line with analysts average estimate of 128,100, according to FactSet StreetAccount.
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Yelp’s mobile app was accessed by 23 million unique devices on a monthly average basis, up 27% from a year earlier.
The San Francisco-based company raised its full-year 2016 revenue forecast to $700 million to $708 million from $690 million to $702 million.
Yelp said it also partnered with and made a small investment in Nowait, a mobile platform that allows restaurants to manage their waiting lists.