LinkedIn (LNKD) reported earnings on July 31, 2014

LinkedIn to Acquire Bright

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 6, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LinkedIn, (NYSE:LNKD), the world's largest professional network on the Internet with approximately 277 million members worldwide, today announced it agreed to acquire Bright, a company that leverages data insights and matching technology to connect prospects and employers.

The transaction is valued at approximately $120 million, subject to adjustment, and consists of approximately 73 percent stock and approximately 27 percent cash. The stock being issued in the transaction will be done so in a private placement. Subject to the completion of customary closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to close during the first quarter of 2014.

"What LinkedIn does best is connect talent with opportunity at massive scale," said Deep Nishar, SVP of Products and User Experience. "By leveraging Bright's data-driven matching technology, machine-learning algorithms and domain expertise, we can accelerate our efforts and build out the Economic Graph."

"We're excited to join LinkedIn because the company shares a similar vision and is equally obsessed about using data and algorithms to connect prospects and employers," said Eduardo Vivas, who founded Bright in February 2011.

Following closing, several members of Bright's team, including those from Engineering and Product, will join LinkedIn. Bright's users and Hiring Solutions customers will be able to access existing data on its website through February 28.

Parker Barrile, vice president of product for LinkedIn Talent Solutions, blogged about the acquisition on the LinkedIn blog. A SlideShare presentation outlining the deal and showcasing several of Bright's employment market analyses can be found on LinkedIn's SlideShare page and on the investor relations section of the LinkedIn website. Vivas blogged about the acquisition on the Bright blog.

About LinkedIn

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. With approximately 277 million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the Internet. The company has a diversified business model with revenue coming from Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, LinkedIn also has offices across the globe.

Recent tech IPO performance

LinkedIn (LNKD) looks like a buy today

LinkedIn (LNKD) : early investors start to cash out

LNKD will most likely continue sliding because:

• Insider selling: Bain Capital selling their entire LinkedIn holding, i.e. 3.7 million shares, or about 4.3% of its outstanding stock (more than $275 mln worth), according to a regulatory filing. It bought into the company in 2008 as the largest investor in a $53 million funding round.
• Insider selling: both CEO and CFO selling 10% of their holdings
• The sales follow a 180 day "lock-up" agreement following the company's May 19 IPO. That agreement prevented certain investors from unloading their stakes until the end of the period, which expires on Nov. 20.
• A secondary offering is coming up soon: 1.3 million new shares, worth about $100 million. The company announced that second offering earlier this month.
• Company reported a loss of $1.6 million for the third quarter

** daily **

** weekly ** 

LinkedIn drops 17%, closes below IPO open

LinkedIn, the best IPO of 2011, dropped more 17%, and closed at $75.47 -- i.e. below the $83 opening price on its IPO day on May 19, 2011

LinkedIn's 2Q earnings soar as growth accelerates

LinkedIn emerged from its recently completed IPO with another quarter of accelerating growth on its professional networking website.

Besides impressive revenue and membership gains, LinkedIn Corp. earned money in the second quarter instead of posting a loss as analysts expected.

The results announced Thursday provided the first update on LinkedIn's progress since the company's headline-grabbing initial public offering in May. LinkedIn's shares have more than doubled from their IPO price of $45, stirring a debate about whether investors are overvaluing Internet companies.

LinkedIn earned $4.5 million, or 4 cents per share, in the April-June period. That contrasted with earnings of $938,000, or 2 cents per share, at the same time last year.

Revenue more than doubled from last year to $121 million while membership climbed 61 percent to 116 million.

SEC on lookout for bubble-era IPO practices

(Reuters) - Some recent red-hot initial public offerings have the Securities and Exchange Commission concerned that Wall Street's underwriters may be tempted to revive some troubling tech bubble practices.

"You can't help but be concerned by IPO valuations," Robert Khuzami, the SEC's enforcement chief, told an audience of Wall Street lawyers and compliance officers in New York on Tuesday.

A combination of first-day trading spikes -- such as a 109 percent advance by social networking company LinkedIn Corp (LNKD) last month -- and razor-thin yields on bonds and other securities, may create an environment where Wall Street investment banks can take advantage of investor demand.

"It hasn't been that long ago that allocation practices were at the forefront of everyone's mind, and charges were brought against firms for Reg M and aftermarket violations for using their allocation process for creating demand in the aftermarket," Khuzami said at a luncheon hosted by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Khuzami said the SEC will look to see "whether or not" these issues "give rise to practices that we saw historically and that troubled us."

LinkedIn's shares on May 19 more than doubled in price on their first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange, evoking memories of the frenzied dot-com bubble years. The advent of online brokerage accounts and a nation of day traders helped then start-ups like theglobe.com, VA Linux and MarketWatch.com rise by six- and seven-fold.

Many of these bubble babies burned through their proceeds and then disappeared, leaving millions of small investors stuck with losses.

The SEC and other regulators later brought cases against Wall Street's biggest banks for a number of practices designed to generate those eye-popping returns.

Regulation M is a set of SEC rules intended to preclude manipulative conduct by individuals with an interest in the outcome of a securities offering.

Investment bankers, serving as the bridge between investors and companies, typically try to price an IPO so that the stock rises about 15 percent on the first day of trading: enough to reward investors who made a bet but not so much that issuers feel short-changed.

NEW BUBBLE?

Recently, several hot-button technology companies and Chinese firms have generated big first-day gains.

Renren Inc (RENN), one of the biggest social networking companies in China, last month surged 296 percent in its debut. Strong demand for the unprofitable company was viewed as a sign investors were eager to snap up social media companies.

There was also a 134 percent jump by Qihoo 360 Technology (QIHU) in March. Yandex NV (YNDX), known as "Russia's Google," rose 55 percent in its trading debut.

Khuzami before his luncheon remarks told Reuters that the recent news of accounting scandals involving a number of Chinese companies has the agency's full attention.

"We're looking at that issue from a variety of fronts, from listing standards of the exchanges, to the (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) and enforcement," he said on the sidelines of the SIFMA event. "We're obviously focused on the auditing firms. It's a problem and we're devoting some energy to it."

The recent collapse of Sino-Forest, a Canada-listed Chinese company, raised pressure on regulators to stem a tide of accounting scandals that snagged investors who had been eager to tap into China's growth.

Last week SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said the agency would address concern about shoddy accounting that has caused numerous Chinese companies to restate earnings and send their share prices plummeting.

Some market watchers, though, say there are signs that investors are more skeptical this time around.

Internet radio provider Pandora Media Inc (P) rose by half on its first day, but the money-losing company saw its shares fell hard in subsequent days and remain below their offering price.

Zynga Is Said to Favor Following LinkedIn With a ‘Low-Float’ IPO Strategy

Zynga Inc. plans to sell a small number of shares in its initial public offering, adopting a strategy used by LinkedIn Corp. to maintain control of the company while raising money to expand, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Zynga may make less than 10 percent of its shares available to the public in its IPO, said the person, who declined to be named because the plans are private. That compares with a 24 percent average among U.S. technology IPOs in the past year, according to Bloomberg data.

By selling little stock in the IPO, companies protect the value of existing investors’ stakes. A jump in the stock price would let them raise cash at a higher value months later. LinkedIn is up 73 percent since its IPO, and Zynga Chief Executive Officer Mark Pincus is likely betting on a similar rise, yet there’s no guarantee the stocks will stay high, said David Menlow, president of IPOfinancial.com, a research firm.

“Companies in this space realize there’s a feeding frenzy afoot,” said Menlow, whose firm is based in Millburn, New Jersey. “The risk is that as a CEO you believe you are better than you actually are. The reality may be something very different.”

Zynga and LinkedIn have another connection: LinkedIn Chairman and co-founder Reid Hoffman is also on the board of Zynga and was an early investor.

Goldman Sachs

Zynga, the top developer of games for Facebook Inc.’s site, has yet to submit an IPO filing, and its plans may change. The San Francisco company is in talks to have Goldman Sachs Group Inc. lead the stock sale by the end of the month, a person familiar with the matter said last week. Dani Dudeck, a Zynga spokeswoman, declined to comment on the IPO or the number of shares that will be sold.

LinkedIn, the largest professional-networking site, held its IPO on May 18, becoming the first social-media company to go public. Other Internet companies are now preparing to follow, with online-radio service Pandora Media Inc. expected to start trading next week. LinkedIn sold 8.3 percent of its stock in the offering, while Pandora is selling 8.6 percent.

Groupon Inc., the leading online provider of daily deals, filed for its IPO last week. In a memo to employees, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason said the Chicago-based business would “make a small piece of our company available.”

OpenTable’s Strategy

The approach, known as a low-float IPO, also was used by OpenTable Inc. (OPEN) in its 2009 offering. The restaurant-reservation service sold about 15 percent of its shares initially. After a 40 percent price jump, it offered more than twice that number four months later. The stock is now up more than fourfold since the IPO, bolstering gains for early investors and employees.

The strategy was more about preventing the value of shares from getting watered down, said Bill Gurley, a board member at San Francisco-based OpenTable.

“The goal wasn’t low float, it was low dilution,” said Gurley, who also serves as a partner at Benchmark Capital in Menlo Park, California, an OpenTable backer. “They just come in the same package.”

Companies using this tactic often see their stocks rise, in part because of the small supply of available shares. That helps them build excitement around their brands, said Lise Buyer, founder of IPO advisory firm Class V Group. Often, the companies will use the initial sale to gauge market demand for a bigger offering later, she said.

Virtual Goods

Zynga makes its money from selling virtual items within games -- for instance, a townhouse in “CityVille.” The worldwide virtual-goods market is expected to more than double to $20.3 billion in 2014, from $9.28 billion last year, according to ThinkEquity LLC, a San Francisco-based research firm. Still, Zynga will be the first of its kind on the U.S. public markets.

“If you’re in a new business model that nobody understands, this is a way to test the market,” said Buyer, who helped run Google Inc. (GOOG)’s IPO in 2004. “No one knows how to value these companies, so why not put a little bit out there and then do a bigger one later once you’ve seen what the market will pay?”

It doesn’t always work. MakeMyTrip Ltd. (MMYT), an online travel site based in India, sold 5 million shares, or 15 percent of the company, in August. The stock rose 89 percent on the first day of trading. In March, it filed to sell an additional 6 million shares, only to reduce it to 5.24 million last month due to lack of demand. The shares then fell 5.6 percent.

For Zynga’s Pincus, selling less of the company may be more about maintaining control than boosting the stock price. Even after raising hundreds of millions of dollars in private capital, Pincus still owns about 30 percent of the company he founded in 2007, according to a person familiar with the matter. He’s talked openly about it in the past.

“I would fight to the end for control because if you don’t have control of your company then you are an employee,” Pincus said in 2009 to students at a Stanford University forum. “If you’re going to give up control, go home.”

LinkedIn IPO raises more than $4 billion

Largest tech offering since Google; shares begin trading on NYSE Thursday 
Investors keen to get in on the online networking craze snapped up LinkedIn Corp.'s IPO at $45 per share late Wednesday, hitting the top end of the projected price range. It minted LinkedIn with a market value of more than $4 billion, the highest for a U.S. Internet company taking its first bow on Wall Street since Google Inc. went public nearly seven years ago.

LinkedIn Corp.'s shares will make their market debut Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. Mutual funds, pension funds and other major money managers got the first chance to buy most of the IPO's 7.84 million shares because stock in these offerings is typically sold to investment bankers' top customers. That means Main Street investors will get their first chance at LinkedIn on Thursday. Most analysts believe that demand will send shares higher in their first day of trading even though the IPO price already is well above LinkedIn's initial target of $32 to $35 per share.

The lofty $4.3 billion appraisal of LinkedIn reflects investors' belief that Internet services that connect people with common interests will be able to make more money as the Web's audience steadily expands. LinkedIn's valuation eventually may look modest compared to other Internet companies that are being touted as potentially going public in the next 18 months. The short list includes: online messaging service Twitter, Web game maker Zynga, coupon site Groupon and Facebook, the social network that boasts more than 500 million users.

LinkedIn, based down the street from Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, runs a website that serves as part-Rolodex, part-hiring center for workers trying to meet people who might further their careers and businesses searching for talented employees. More than 102 million people have set up LinkedIn profiles so far. Another million join each week.

The company makes most of its money from fees charged for better access to the data on its website. It earned $3.4 million on revenue of $243 million last year, but expects to lose money this year as it invests in new products and more computers to run its services.

LinkedIn's initial public offering of stock raised a total of $353 million. The company's take works out to $217 million, before investment banking fees and other expenses. The remaining $136 million was divided among 87 stockholders who sold a total of 3 million shares in the IPO.

The biggest windfalls went to: Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which will get $39 million from the sale of 871,840 shares; Bain Capital Venture, which will get $29 million from the sale of 653,880 shares; the McGraw-Hill Cos., which will get $20 million from the sale of 435,920 shares; and Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's co-founder and executive chairman, who made $5 million on the sale of 115,335 shares. Hoffman retains a 20 percent stake now worth $853 million.

Now a venture capitalist, Hoffman, 43, also was among the early investors in Facebook, which has said it might file IPO papers before May 2012.

LinkedIn's CEO is Jeff Weiner, a former Yahoo Inc. executive who has been running the professional networking company for the past two years. The company's stock will trade under the ticker "LNKD."

LinkedIn sees IPO pricing up by 30 percent to More than $405 Million

LinkedIn, which is set for an initial public offering on Thursday, is now on track to raise $405.7 million — up from an estimated $274.4 million earlier this month, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday.

With investor demand surging for social media companies, LinkedIn, which has more than 100 million members in over 200 counties, said it plans to sell more than 9 million shares at $42 to $45 each.

Its current I.P.O. plans represent a 30 percent-plus increase from previous expectations. In early May, the professional networking site said in a regulatory filing that it planned to sell 7.8 million shares at $32 to $35 a piece.

LinkedIn is the latest in a flurry of Internet companies rushing to go public, amid strong investor appetite and improved market conditions. And social networking sites are among the most highly anticipated, with LinkedIn set to be one of the first major players in the United States to go public this year. At the top end of the range, the company is currently valued at roughly $4.3 billion, compared with more than $3 billion based on earlier pricing.

Other giants in the space are expected to follow with blockbuster offerings. Groupon, the social shopping site, is said to be considering an I.P.O. for later this year. Facebook, by far the largest social networking sites, could see a market debut in 2012.

An I.P.O. offers entrepreneurs and institutional investors a chance to cash out. LinkedIn’s chairman, Reid Hoffman, who is selling a small number of shares, will net an estimated $5.2 million, assuming the shares price at $45. His entire stake is $852.8 million. Goldman Sachs is the largest seller in the I.P.O., offering 871,840, the firm’s entire stake.

But it remains to be seen how well the stocks will perform in the public markets. The Chinese social networking site Renren priced its offering on the New York Stock Exchange at $14. While its shares closed at $18 on the first day of trading on May 4, the stock is currently trading at $12.60.

LinkedIn files for IPO, reveals sales of $161 million

(CNNMoney) -- Business social network LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering late Thursday, offering the first public glimpse into the finances of the seven-year-old Web company.

LinkedIn turned a profit of $10.1 million on revenue of $161 million in the first nine months of 2010, according to documents filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But it may not last: "We expect our revenue growth rate to decline, and as we continue to invest for future growth, we do not expect to be profitable on a GAAP basis in 2011," the company warned in its filing.

In 2009, its last full fiscal year, LinkedIn had a loss of $4 million on sales of $120.2 million. The company has been in the red every year except 2006, when it turned a slight profit on revenue of $32 million.

The company isn't hurting for cash: It's currently sitting on a stash of $89.6 million. LinkedIn filed to raise up to $175 million in its offering, but that's a preliminary number and companies often change those targets as they get closer to their IPO.

The professional networking site launched in May 2003, and it's now adding one new user every second. LinkedIn has more than 90 million users, with more than half of its members located outside of the United States.

But LinkedIn warned about increased competition both stateside and overseas, naming Facebook, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Twitter as rivals who "could develop competing solutions or partner with third parties to offer such products." It also called out Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France.

In the three months ending in September, 65 million unique users visited LinkedIn's site.

The company now has 990 employees -- though many of them are newbies. LinkedIn said that more than half of its staff has been with the company for less than one year, and 74% joined within the past two years.

CEO Jeff Weiner pulled in a $250,000 salary and a $211,055 bonus in 2010.

LinkedIn has a dual-stock structure, which gives the company's insiders sigificant control over shareholder decisions even after others become stockholders. Google and Facebook have similar structures.

Co-founder Reid Hoffman and other executives hold Class B shares, which have 10 times the voting power of the Class A shares LinkedIn will sell to the public. It's a structure that's controversial with shareholder advocates but popular among Silicon Valley companies, which want to ensure that their founders are able to enforce their vision.

LinkedIn Said Likely to File for Initial Public Offering Today

(Bloomberg) -- LinkedIn Corp., the largest networking website for professionals, is likely to file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering as early as today, a person familiar with the situation said.

LinkedIn, of Mountain View, California, hired Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to lead the offering, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. LinkedIn spokesman Hani Durzy declined to comment.

The company is valued at $2.5 billion on SharesPost Inc., an exchange for shares of private companies. The filing would come after Demand Media Inc., a provider of content for social- media websites, expanded its IPO earlier this week by 26 percent, raising $151 million. A $500 million investment in Facebook Inc. by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies valued Facebook at $50 billion, Facebook said last week.

LinkedIn, which has more than 1,000 employees, has grown to 90 million users in more than 200 countries, according to the company. Members use the site to search for jobs, recruit employees and find industry experts. The site is dwarfed by Palo Alto, California-based Facebook, the most popular social network, which has more than 500 million users.

The plans for an IPO filing were reported earlier by the AllThingsDigital blog.