LinkedIn Earnings Soar, But Outlook Disappoints Investors

Social network LinkedIn posted incredibly high revenues and profits for its first quarter report. Still, the stock price plunged due to the company’s lower-than-expected guidance for coming quarters.

The Wall Street Journal’s Evelyn M. Rusli reported, “LinkedIn Corp. nearly doubled its revenue and more than quadrupled its profit in its latest quarter. But the professional social network’s stock still fell back down to earth. Shares of LinkedIn, which were up more than 76% so far this year, plunged more than 10% in after-hours trading Thursday to $181.36 after the Mountain View, Calif., company reported first-quarter earnings.

ZDNet’s Rachel King noted, “The Mountain View, Calif.-based operation reported first quarter earnings of $22.6 million, or 20 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings were 45 cents a share on a revenue of $324.7 million. Wall Street was expecting LinkedIn to report first quarter earnings of 31 cents a share on revenue of $317.08 million.”

The Associated Press added, “LinkedIn expects second-quarter revenue between $342 million and $347 million for the April-June period. Analysts had forecast $360 million. For the full year, LinkedIn believes its revenue will range from $1.43 billion to $1.46 billion. That’s $20 million more than the company had predicted a few months ago, but analysts have been counting on full-year revenue of $1.5 billion.”

CNNMoney’s Julianne Pepitone explained, “Revenue from ‘talent solutions,’ which lets companies post jobs and helps recruiters contact potential candidates, totaled $184 million. That’s 57% of LinkedIn’s total revenue for the quarter, up from 54% from the same period in 2012. Talent solutions stole a few percentage points from the marketing sector. Revenue from marketing products came in at nearly $75 million, which represents 23% of LinkedIn’s total revenue. That’s a slight slip from 25% a year ago…. LinkedIn’s third product, paid subscriptions, came in around $67 million. Those ‘premium subscriptions’ represented 20% of total sales last quarter, consistent with the first quarter of 2012.”