LinkedIn Files For IPO; Revenue $161 Million For The First Nine Months Of 2010

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Professional social network LinkedIn has just submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC, indicating that it will file for a public offering. The maximum proposed total offering price is $175 million but this is just a placeholder amount. The company also announced the filing on its blog.

In terms of revenue, during the nine months ended September 30, 2010, LinkedIn’s net revenue doubled to $161 million from $80.6 during the same period in 2009. Net income for the first nine months of 2010 came in at $10 million.

LinkedIn’s total net revenue in 2009 was $120 million, which LinkedIn obviously surpassed in 2010. The company took a $3.9 million loss in terms of net income, with 2010 as the first profitable year for the network. As of September 30, 2010, LinkedIn had $89.6 million in cash. The company currently has 990 employees and over 90 million members.

LinkedIn also shed light on its revenue breakdown by source. According to the filing, 41 percent of 2010 revenue came hiring solutions ($65.9 million), 32 percent came from marketing ($51.4 million); and 27 percent came from premium subscriptions ($44.1 million). Net revenue from LinkedIn’s hiring solutions products increased $42.2 million, or 178 percent from 2009 to 2010.

Other interesting things to note from the filing, with regard to LinkedIn’s risks:

“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 number of our registered members is higher than the number of actual members, and a substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members… If the number of our actual members does not meet our expectations or we are unable to increase the breadth and frequency of our visiting members, then our business may not grow as fast as we expect, which will harm our operating and financial results and may cause our stock price to decline.”

In terms of competition, LinkedIn says this in the document:

Other companies such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter could develop competing solutions or partner with third parties to offer such products. We face competition from a number of smaller companies in international markets, such as Xing in Germany and Viadeo in France, that provide online professional networking solutions, as well as Internet companies in the customer relationship management market, such as Salesforce.com (Chatter and Jigsaw).

With respect to acquisitions, LinkedIn paid $560,000 for mSpoke and $3.9 million for ChoiceVendor.

Company: LinkedIn
Website: linkedin.com
Launch Date: May 1, 2003
IPO: NYSE:LNKD

With over 100 million users representing over 200 countries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find potential clients. Individuals have the ability to create their own professional profile that can be viewed by others in their network, and also view the profiles of their own contacts. Competitors to LinkedIn include sites such as XING, Doostang and Ecademy. Of note, LinkedIn won...

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