Yelp inches slowly toward profitability, losing just $878,000 in one quarter

About 15 months ago, Yelp, the renowned service review website, became one of the latest tech companies to bring an initial public offering. But the company has long discovered it’s hard to translate tons of reviews into profits: since Yelp began keeping track in 2008, it's been losing increasing amounts of money nearly every year.

In the corporation's latest earnings report, posted on Wednesday, Yelp’s year-over-year quarterly revenue reached $55 million, a 69 percent growth over the second quarter of 2012. However, Yelp continues to lose money. This quarter, the company sustained a net loss of $878,000. The good news? That’s a small fraction of the more than $5.6 million lost in total during the first half of 2013.

By comparison, at this point in 2012, the San Francisco firm already lost $11.7 million. And by the end of that year, Yelp reached a net loss of $19.1 million—the largest annual loss the company sustained to date. Still, in after-hours trading today, investors showed modest confidence in the new earnings report, boosting Yelp’s stock price by more than seven percent. It's currently hovering slightly under $42.

"We had a great second quarter with strong execution in all areas of our business as the Yelp brand becomes increasingly prevalent around the world," said Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's chief executive officer, in a statement. "In the second quarter, we launched new features on the mobile app and created a Call to Action feature, yet another way for us to close the loop between consumers and local businesses.”