Wall Street Darling LinkedIn Beats Estimates Again, Revenue Booms 59% To $363M, Now At 238M Members

LinkedIn continues to be on of the few companies that can do no wrong on Wall Street, continuing to beat estimates and display growth curves that consistently move up and to the right. Amazon would perhaps be one of the few other exceptions, as Jeff Bezos’ short-term-loss-for-long-term-gain continues to confound the status quo.

The professional network announced its second quarter earnings results on Thursday, and it was another good one, as the company grew to 238 million members and saw revenue increase to 59 percent to $363.7 million from $228.2 million in Q2 2012. Meanwhile, net income also jumped to $3.7 million from $2.8 million in Q2 last year, while non-GAAP net income was $44.5 million, compared to $18.1 million in 2012.

“Accelerated member growth and strong engagement drove record operating and financial results in the second quarter,” LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said in today’s statement. “We are continuing to invest in driving scale across the LinkedIn platform in order to fully realize our long-term potential.”

To build that scale and to follow through with its ongoing plans to build out the go-to professional content network, LinkedIn’s investments have included those like the $90 million acquisition of Pulse and startups like Maybe to dig deeper into mobile.

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LinkedIn’s adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $88.6 million (24 percent of revenue) compared to $50.4 million for Q2 2012, and GAAP diluted EPS for the second quarter was $0.03, while non-GAAP diluted EPS for Q2 was $0.38.

Meanwhile, as most of LinkedIn’s class of tech IPOs continue to struggle (namely Zynga and Groupon), the company has put together a string of victories. While some questioned its ability to diversify its revenue streams, Linked has been seeing continuing growth in each of its three revenue buckets. This quarter, as per usual, talent solutions took the cake, representing the biggest slice of LinkedIn’s business, as revenue from its talent solutions products hit $205.1 million, up 69 percent compared to Q2 2012.

Talent solutions’ share of revenue grew slightly to 56 percent of total revenue, up from 53 percent last year. Marketing solutions, on the other hand, came in at $85.6 million, an increase of 36 percent when compared to last year and premium subscriptions hit $73 million, representing an increase of 68 percent over Q2 2012, and 20 percent of total revenue.

Other highlights from the quarter included the addition of some big names to its growing “Influencer Program” or roster of Super Awesome Motivational Bloggers, as I like to call them, including Bill Gates, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Jamie Dimon, the Burberry CEO, Japan’s Prime Minister. These new influencers helped LinkedIn “more than double” its homepage traffic over the last year.

The company also “revamped its mobile phone experience” with new iOS and Android apps, saying in its report that “mobile activity has increased, with mobile homepage engagement rising over 40%, and increasing levels of social actions, article views, and mobile profile edits when compared to the past version.”

The company also released a new version of its flagship Recruiter platform for Talent Solutions customers and also launched CheckIn, which “enables student members to engage with recruiters at on-campus hiring events.”