B. Riley Is Selling Yelp

Shares of Yelp Inc (NYSE: YELP) were trading down 2.58 percent on Thursday. B. Riley analyst Sameet Sinha downgraded Yelp to Sell from Neutral with a price target lowered from $21.00 to $15.00 based on 9x 2016 AEBITDA (13x previously).

The analyst is lowering its 2016/2017 AEBITDA by 9 percent/2 percent.

The firm noted that Yelp's traffic of -13 percent quarter-over-quarter implied its first quarter ever of year-over-year declines, due to increased competition from Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

Yelp CEO and Co-Founder Jeremy Stoppleman stated that Google's version of Yelp "doesn't have all the content" and that Google's version is trying to promote its version of the service "because that's where the advertising revenue is for them, but that's not necessarily what's best for the consumers," in an interview on "CBS This Morning" Wednesday.

B. Riley sees the company's traffic declining even more in the fourth quarter.

Advertising effectiveness may also be less. The firm noted that competition is also increasing in 2016, and as a result could necessitate higher advertising spend.

Shares of Yelp are down nearly 63 percent over the last 12 months.