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.

Perella Weinberg to advise Treasury on Ally IPO

Perella Weinberg, the independent investment bank, has won the mandate of advising the US Treasury on the initial public offering of Ally Financial, the former financing arm of General Motors.

People familiar with the matter said that Perella’s appointment would be announced by the Treasury as soon as Thursday and comes as Ally executives begin to meet with banks to discuss its stock offering, expected to happen sometime this year.

Ally is interviewing about 10 banks as possible underwriters for the IPO – expected to include all the largest Wall Street institutions – in a series of meetings in New York this week. The offering could value Ally at between $8bn and $15bn, those people added.

Perella Weinberg, in contrast, will be tasked with representing the interests of the US government in the offering.

The Treasury owns about 74 percent of Ally – the new name for GMAC – after investing a total of $17.2bn into business during 2008 and 2009 as part of the bailout of the US car industry.

The government has taken to appointing an independent investment bank, sometimes called a boutique adviser, to advise it on the process of unwinding some of its crisis-time investments.

A spokesman for Perella referred inquiries to the Treasury, who did not respond to a request for comment. Ally declined to comment.

Perella lost out to Lazard in the battle to advise the Treasury in last year’s IPO of General Motors. GM in November raised $20.1bn in one of the world’s largest public offerings, allowing the US government to cut its stake in the carmaker.

In December, Ally took the first step towards an IPO when the Treasury said it would convert $5.5bn of preferred stock in the financing company into common equity.

The conversion bolstered Ally’s common equity, bringing its capital ratios into line with other lenders in the sector and was designed to help the company raise funds on more favourable terms.

However, the US government still owns a further $5.9bn of convertible preferred stock, which could hamper the IPO process unless proceeds were used to redeem the remaining government ownership in the company.

Auto financing companies are once again back in vogue following the financial crisis. GM itself last year bought AmeriCredit, an independent auto finance business, for $3.5bn.

In December, Toronto-Dominion Bank snapped up Chrysler Financial, which was separated from its parent when Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, for $6.3bn as part of a push by the Canadian bank into the US consumer finance market.

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.