Until recently, Yelp had a giant stockpile of cash, but an activist investor successfully launched a campaign to get Yelp management to return much of that cash via buybacks [1]. By the end of 2018, Yelp had a cash balance of ~$837 million and proceeded to return almost $500 million in cash to stockholders via buybacks in 2019 [2].

Hoarding cash may seem like a good idea in hindsight, but public market investors will often raise a huge stink if you try.

[1] https://sqnletters.com/content/uploads/2019/01/Yelp-A-Fresh-... [2] https://ycharts.com/companies/YELP/stock_buyback