Yelp is preparing to fight an activist investor who is pulling for a board shake-up and a potential sale According to CNBC sources say that the review site has hired Evercore to help defend it against hedge fund manager SQN which owns 4 percent of Yelp shares Last month SQN released a presentation citing the companys significant underperformance and called for an immediate sale to a private equity firm could yield a 47 to 50 stock price We continue to believe Yelp has great potential to deliver significant value for its investors Amish Mehta founder of SQN Investors said in a statement last month After years of Yelp underperformance we have lost patience and believe the board needs fresh perspectives and stockholder representation Evercore is now reportedly exploring the market for the company but has yet to start a sales process With a current market valuation of over 3 billion there are not many credible buyers one of the sources said SQNs report suggests that Yelp is worth 4 billion or more The site has had a hard time over the last few years as it has faced tough competition from the likes of Google Shares of Yelp have fallen by more than half over the past five years and are down 15 percent in the past 12 months In fact activist investor SQN revealed that Yelp has underperformed on the Russell 2000 Technology Index by 117 percent As we made clear in our detailed presentation released in January SQN believes there are multiple pathways to significant value creation at Yelp including through the company remaining public and implementing our recommendations or through a sale of the company to a large universe of private or strategic buyers according to a statement from SQN We are unclear on how anyone could credibly state that potential buyers dont exist without having run a fulsome strategic process As weve previously stated we know of multiple buyers who would be interested and we believe these potential acquirers would be eager to participate in such a process LATEST INSIGHTS Our data and analytics team has developed a number of creative methodologies and frameworks that measure and benchmark the innovation thats reshaping the payments and commerce ecosystem Check out the latest PYMNTS Faster Payments Tracker