Jim Cramer thinks both Yelp and Twitter are in big trouble. The conference calls for both companies were just absolutely horrendous, with Yelp in total denial of what's going wrong and Twitter throwing itself into the fire and begging investors to light the match.
Granted, these two companies are two different animals and the "Mad Money" host hates to lump them together. He does so because they were both big companies at one time with huge prospects, and totally blew it. They could have been the next Salesforce, Netflix or Google.
What the heck happened?
"Yelp feels like it is in total secular decline where the competition is getting downright deadly," Cramer said. (Tweet This)
Twitter, on the other hand, is all over the place. Cramer saw the executives go from embracing what previous CEO Dick Costolo was working on, to complete rejection of everything he was trying to do to boost user engagement.
Cramer has watched as Yelp continued to miss numbers, not grow and get out of advertising campaigns—basically turn into the next MySpace.
Twitter though, is actually not doing that badly from a financial perspective. However Cramer felt that the conference call was just bursting with self-hatred, and management made investors feel like a complete moron for even liking the company, let alone the stock.
But the good news is that Twitter is monetizing like crazy. The problem is that it is doing so for an audience that appears to be shrinking by the next time the company reports.
"Believe me, I didn't get a better feel when I spoke to CFO Anthony Noto today, who basically told me not to hold my breath while they made changes to bring in and bring back users who don't care about the service," Cramer said.
So are both Twitter and Yelp a lost cause, or could there be a shred of hope left for investors?
At this point, Cramer has little hope left for Yelp. In his perspective it wouldn't be able to turn itself around without massive layoffs, cheaper ad rates and a change in technical layout.
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Twitter still has some life left in it because there are so many big tweeters who want to keep it alive to build their brands. So while it's not hopeless, it's not exactly something that anyone would want to pay $23.55 billion for.
"I think both Yelp and Twitter blew it. They were big companies that became small. They were companies that could have grown into their monster market capitalizations…had they just kept innovating and thinking about their value proposition. Neither did and it's their own darned fault," Cramer said. (Tweet This)
Twitter is now officially a 2016 "show me" story to Cramer. As for Yelp, perhaps it should change its ticker symbol to HELP?
In Cramer's perspective, it might be better off to sell itself immediately before it is too late.
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