Yelp, which made a reputation for itself giving restaurant recs, simply purchased an auto providers web site.
Within the firm’s earnings report on Thursday, Yelp revealed that it agreed to purchase RepairPal, a web site for automotive restore estimates, for $80 million in money. The acquisition is predicted to shut by the top of the yr, topic to customary closing situations.
“We imagine RepairPal will speed up our broader providers efforts by increasing our choices within the multi-billion greenback U.S. auto providers promoting vertical,” Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s co-founder and CEO, mentioned in a press release.
Whereas it may not look like an apparent marriage, RepairPal suits into Yelp’s ambition to turn out to be a serious residence providers funnel.
Lately, Yelp has added performance past restaurant and enterprise search instruments, like an AI-powered characteristic that means plumbers, repairmen, and different residence service suppliers to customers doubtlessly in want of them. Yelp has additionally launched applications like Yelp Assured, which provides as much as $2,500 of protection for qualifying tasks in case of issues.
Yelp makes cash via charges it receives from service suppliers for sure leads — and thru advertisements. Within the firm’s most up-to-date fiscal quarter (Q3 2024), promoting income from providers companies elevated 11% year-over-year to a report $228 million, with income progress of round 15% within the residence providers class alone.
In its shareholder letter, Yelp says that RepairPal generated roughly $30 million in income and was roughly break-even on money and internet earnings.
“We imagine there are clear synergies between Yelp and RepairPal,” the letter reads. “RepairPal brings deep data of auto repairs and pricing, which we will leverage to enhance our choices for auto providers companies. Additionally they keep a strong associate community, together with CarMax, USAA, and Endurance Car Companies. In the meantime, Yelp has a big client viewers and experience in areas like search engine marketing, search engine advertising and marketing, and AI, which we imagine will present worth to RepairPal going ahead.”
The acquisition is a pleasant exit for San Francisco-based RepairPal, which managed to lift $21.3 million in funding from Automobiles.com, Tugboat Ventures, and others within the 17 years because the firm’s founding. In its press launch, Yelp didn’t say whether or not founders Aaron Tavistock, David Esser, and David Sturtz will probably be becoming a member of Yelp company.
A Yelp spokesperson later confirmed to TechCrunch that each one RepairPal staff, together with the management (however not the founders, who not head the corporate), will probably be becoming a member of Yelp.
