Jefferies laid out potential buyers for Yelp (YELP) after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company hired bankers to explore a sale. A Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Yelp (YELP) combination makes the most sense, the firm believes. It points out Google unsuccessfully tried to buy Yelp for $550M in 2009. Other potential buyers include Facebook (FB), Priceline (PCLN), GrubHub (GRUB) and Yahoo (YHOO), the firm notes. Jefferies views Yelp as a highly valuable asset and keeps a Buy rating on the stock with a $79 price target. Deutsche Bank today pegged the chances of a Yelp buyout at 60% and estimates a takeout price between $59 and $85 per share. The stock closed yesterday up $8.79 to $47.01 following the Journal's report.

Meta Platforms (META), the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, Threads and other brands, is scheduled to report first quarter 2024 results after market close on Wednesday, April 24 with a conference call scheduled for 5 pm ET. Here's what to... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

The promise of AI has already driven a massive market rally. The irony is that Apple (AAPL), the company with more context about our lives than any other, has been left behind, Alex Eule writes in this week's edition of Barron's. Unlike Big Tech rivals Meta (META) and Alphabet (GOOGL), or the start-up OpenAI, it has yet to create its own large-language model. The switch to AI, to be sure, is more complex than making a larger-screen phone. But Apple's dominance hasn't changed. And that puts it at the center of any shift - real or artificial, the author says. Reference Link