Initial public offerings remain rare now, and this scarcity can drive up prices. Those shares traded 30 million times in the first day. LinkedIn’s valuation, many analysts say, is partly a function of investor demand for all things social media but also related to the fact that a limited number of shares - nine million - were issued. “I don’t know anybody who could make that case.”

“Do you really imagine that LinkedIn could have gotten this valuation if not for the excitement of Facebook?” asked Kevin Landis, the chief investment officer of Firsthand Funds, which rode the tech boom and bust a decade ago. The social buying site Groupon, which raised $1 billion from investors in January, is said to be considering an offering that could value the company at $20 billion.Īnd the barometer for the segment, Facebook, which is widely expected to go public next year, has rocketed higher in the private secondary markets with its shares trading at an implied valuation of as much as $80 billion in recent months.Īs the first social media company out of the gates into the public markets, LinkedIn benefited from all of the attention Facebook has ginned up. “This is a company that grew revenues by 110 percent in the first quarter and, on top of that, it’s actually turned a profit.”īy far, the hottest segment of the Internet market is social media companies. We’re not talking about a start-up here,” said Matt Therian, a research analyst at Renaissance Capital, based in Greenwich, Conn. “LinkedIn is not a company you have to value on page views.

In those days, companies without earnings were assessed with measurements like “eyeballs,” the number of people who visited a site “stickiness,” how long they visited and even “mindshare,” how aware the public was of the company or category. Still, many people are hesitant to proclaim that the markets are on the cusp of another tech bubble or that the markets are returning to the days when unprofitable new companies could be valued at billions of dollars.

Current linkedin stock price