Shares of LinkedIn, a social network for business professionals, ended their debut on the New York Stock Exchange up 109 percent at $94.25 as the first high-profile Web 2.0 initial public offering made a huge splash in public trading.

It’s a sign of the excitement around social networking and its promise, although the results were enough for some people to say it was part of a ridiculous bubble.

That means LinkedIn now has a market cap of around $9 billion — well above the valuation of $4 billion it claimed when it priced the shares of its initial public offering between $42 and $45. Shares of LinkedIn traded as high as $122 earlier today, giving the company an implied valuation as high as $11 billion. LinkedIn’s valuation is the first official record of the hyper-valuations many Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and Facebook have seen in recent years.

LinkedIn’s shares hovered at around $103 for most of the afternoon before finally dipping down below that level of support toward the end of daytime trading. The company also saw a quick decline in its share prices in the ten minutes before the markets closed, dropping as low as $91 before leveling off at around $94 minutes before the final bell. The shares were trading at $94.24 most recently in extended trading.

The company’s stunning debut on the stock market could end up creating additional chatter about whether several Web 2.0 companies are overvalued. LinkedIn’s closing share price and valuation mean the company is worth somewhere north of 36 times its revenue for 2010, which was around $243 million. There’s also the chance that share prices of LinkedIn could turn south over the next several days, like shares of Chinese social networking company RenRen. That company turned out to be a flop on public trading markets and has fallen below the IPO price of $14 to $13.75 it saw earlier this month.

A number of highly successful Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and Zynga — and LinkedIn — have seen ballooning valuations as investors have rushed to snatch up as many shares as possible ahead of what could be some of the most high-profile tech IPOs to date. Facebook, for example, was valued at $50 billion after its most recent round of funding — though it is trading at a higher price than that on secondary markets.

LinkedIn is based in Mountain View, Calif., and has more than 1,000 employees. The company, founded by Reid Hoffman (pictured above), is a business network that’s designed to help professionals connect with other potential business contacts and get a “warm introduction” through people in their network.

Tags: initial public offering, internet bubble, IPO, social networking, valuation

Companies: linkedin, RenRen

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

LinkedIn, a social network that connects professionals to help form new business contacts, increased the share pricing for its initial public offering tomorrow to between $42 and $45 — giving the company a valuation of around $4 billion — according to an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

It was just 8 days ago that LinkedIn claimed a valuation of $3 billion in an amended S-1 filing with the SEC. The quick about-face to increase the company’s valuation could end up creating additional chatter about whether several Web 2.0 companies are overvalued. LinkedIn’s valuation is the first official record of the hyper-valuations many Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and Facebook have seen in recent years.

The company is looking to raise up to $217 million in its initial public offering by selling 4.8 million shares of common stock. Employees and other shareholders plan to sell around 3 million shares of LinkedIn stock as well — meaning nearly 8 million shares will be up for grabs for public investors. The latest high-profile tech stock to make its trading debut in the U.S. — Chinese social networking company RenRen — turned out to be a flop and has fallen below its IPO price of $14 to $12.73 after the company started trading earlier this month.

A number of highly successful Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and Zynga — and LinkedIn — have seen ballooning valuations as investors have rushed to snatch up as many shares as possible ahead of what could be some of the most high-profile tech IPOs to date. Facebook, for example, was valued at $50 billion after its most recent round of funding — though it is trading at a higher price than that on secondary markets.

LinkedIn’s shares will make their trading debut Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker “LNKD.” It’s one of several high-profile tech initial public offerings that landed on the NYSE over the tech-heavy NASDAQ stock market, ending the exchange’s decade-long dominance over the tech IPO market. The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it’s traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple.

LinkedIn, founded by Reid Hoffman (pictured above), is a business network that’s designed to help professionals connect with other potential business contacts and get a “warm introduction” through people in their network.

Tags: business networking, enterprise, initial public offering, IPO, social networking, valuation

Companies: Facebook, linkedin, RenRen, Zynga

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Business social networking site LinkedIn has priced its initial public offering between $32 and $35 per share, meaning the company seeks to raise up to $175 million and would be valued at $3 billion, according to an updated filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

LinkedIn’s valuation is the first official record of the hyper-valuations many Web 2.0 companies like Twitter and Facebook have seen in recent years. The company plans to offer up to 4.83 million new shares of common stock, which would raise up to $175 million if they sell at the top end of the expected pricing. Current shareholders also plan on selling around 3 million shares of the business social networking company.

LinkedIn, founded by Reid Hoffman (pictured above), is a business network that’s designed to help professionals connect with other potential business contacts and get a “warm introduction” through people in their network.

The company has warned that a majority of its revenue comes from a small number of members who generate a majority of the page views for the site. Its major investors — Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Ventures and Greylock Partners — will not participate in the initial public offering, according to Reuters. Those investors own around 40 percent of the company, according to the company’s S-1 filing with the SEC.

LinkedIn will list its shares under the ticker “LNKD” on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after spurning the tech-heavy NASDAQ stock market. It’s one of several high-profile tech initial public offerings that landed on the NYSE over the NASDAQ, ending the exchange’s decade-long dominance over the tech IPO market. The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it’s traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple.

LinkedIn filed to go public in January this year to raise up to $175 million. The latest filing with the SEC also indicates that LinkedIn now has 100 million members, up from the 90 million it indicated in its last S-1 filing. It had 990 employees at the end of 2010, the last time it reported how many employees it had.

Tags: initial public offering, IPO, social networking, valuation

Companies: Bessemer Ventures, Facebook, Greylock Partners, linkedin, Sequoia Capital, Twitter

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Out of the gate, Chinese social networking operator Renren (RENN) is up 26 cents, or 1.5%, at $17.13, recovering from the 6.3% drop yesterday that followed a nearly 30% rise on Wednesday, the stock’s first day of trading.

Yesterday’s drop was noteworthy given that not many IPOs take such a hard fall on only their second day of trading. At one point yesterday, the stock was down as much as 14%.

Update: I spoke too soon. Renren shares are now down 31 cents, or 1.8%, at $16.56. In a market, I might add, that is jumping up following a stronger-than-expected April jobs report.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Could this be the end of an era?

LinkedIn, one of the highest-profile tech initial public offerings this year, indicated today that it will list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) rather than the NASDAQ stock exchange, according to an updated version of its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The NYSE has dueled with the NASDAQ stock market to attract high-profile tech IPOs, but it’s traditionally been a losing battle as the NASDAQ stock market regularly plays host to the largest tech companies in the world like Google and Apple. But recent high-profile tech IPOs indicate that is changing. The NYSE nabbed Chinese social networking site Renren last month. Pandora, an online radio station and another high-profile tech IPO this year, also said it would list its shares on the NYSE.

LinkedIn’s announcement also comes at a time when NYSE Euronext, the company that runs the New York Stock Exchange, is in a high-profile fight with NASDAQ OMX, the company that runs the NASDAQ stock market. NYSE Euronext is fighting off a takeover bid by its tech-heavy rival stock market. NASDAQ OMX said it is committed to making a deal worth $11.1 billion for NYSE Euronext.

The business-savvy social network will list its shares under the ticker “LNKD.” The company filed to go public in January this year to raise up to $175 million. The latest filing with the SEC also indicates that LinkedIn now has 100 million members, up from the 90 million it indicated in its last S-1 filing.

The updated filing also included some new information about its financial performance. The company brought in $94 million in the first quarter this year, up 110 percent from $45 million in the first quarter last year. It earned $2.1 million off that revenue in the first quarter this year, up 15 percent from $1.8 million in the first quarter last year.

LinkedIn is a business network that’s designed to help professionals connect with other potential business contacts and get a “warm introduction” through people in their network. The company said it had 990 employees at the end of 2010.

Tags: NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange, NYSE, stock market

Companies: linkedin, NASDAQ OMX, NYSE Euronext, Pandora, RenRen

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Legal document website LegalZoom has attracted the attention of two big venture firms, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Institutional Venture Partners.

The Glendale, Calif. company recently announced that it has added Kleiner Perkins and IVP as “new shareholders” — I confirmed with a spokesman that both firms bought stock from existing shareholders. (The news actually went out last week, but doesn’t seem to have gotten much coverage from the tech press.) Interest in secondary markets has been growing (from investors and others), but for the most part hot social networking companies like Facebook and Twitter have hogged the spotlight, so the interest in LegalZoom comes as a bit of a surprise.

The company says it has more than 500 employees and has served more than 1 million customers. In fact, a source told us in February that LegalZoom is in the early stages of preparing for an initial public offering. The company tries to simplify the legal process, not by providing advice per se, but by offering an easy way to create legal documents like wills, business incorporation papers, and so on.

Meanwhile, after a period where it was largely quiet outside of cleantech, Kleiner has been trying to reestablish itself, both by launching early-stage initiatives like its sFund for social networking startups and by going after more mature big names — it led Twitter’s most recent round and also bought Facebook shares on the secondary market.

LegalZoom’s existing investors include Polaris Venture Partners.

Companies: Institutional Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, LegalZoom

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Shares of Salesforce.com (CRM) are up $2.05, or 1.6%, at $133.48, after FBR Capital Markets analyst David Hilal raised his rating today on the shares to Ouperform from Market Perform, with a $170 price target, up from $150, after concluding that the company’s efforts to diversify from just a customer relationship tool into more lines of business is actually going better than he’d thought.

Hilal thinks the stock should get more credit, as it was down, prior to this morning, by 8% in the last three months, versus a 3% rise in the Nasdaq and a 10% rise for the software stocks that FBR follows. The main concern is that new software license bookings — which are tracked by the billings figure — are likely to decelerate this year to just 29% growth from 33% last year. But 29% is still “strong,” in Hilal’s view.

Hilal notes the various growth initiatives beyond the core sales app: the “Service Cloud,” currently in version 3, has added functions that have “closed the gap” with competitors’ offerings, including adding social networking functions. In that last regard, the company’s acquisition of Radian6 last week should help. The “Force.com” offering can turn Salesforce into a “platform vendor” instead of a vendor of disparate applications. The company has boosted Force.com’s appeal by adding the programming language Ruby, he argues.

Hilal’s $170 target represents a multiple of 49 times free cash flow in the fiscal year that ends in June of 2013, which is roughly 2 times the company’s projected growth rate, he notes, for a P/FC/G ratio of 2.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of software vendor Salesforce.com (CRM) are up $6.61, or over 5%, at $134.01 following the company’s announcement this morning it will purchase privately held Radian6, a social networking software maker based on Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock, net of cash acquired.

Radian6′s software is used by companies to monitor and analyze online conversations in social networking fora. In the July-ending fiscal Q2, Salesforce expects the deal to increase revenue by $5 million and to decrease its non-GAAP EPS by 8 cents a share. The deal will contribute $45 million to $50 million for the full fiscal year, and reduce EPS by 11 cents per share. For the full year, then, Salesforce expects revenue of $2.075 billion and to $2.1 billion, and EPS of $1.24 to $1.27.

The Street has been projecting revenue of $2.07 billion and $1.38 in EPS.

Citigroup analyst Walter Pritchard today writes that the deal is a good thing, boosting the appeal of the company’s “Service Cloud” offering. It is Salesforce’s largest acquisition to date, he writes.

Radian6 software will give Salesforce’s customers “access to the full Twitter fire hose” discussions, which would make Salesforce “one of a handful of companies with this privilege.” It would also add to the ability for Salesforce’s software to “monitor many more blogs and sites, plus analytics and filtering that help end users make sense of the information age.”

Nevertheless, Pritchard sticks with a Hold rating on Salesforce shares and a $145 price target.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Bloomberg’s Pooja Thakur, Unni Krishnan, and Andrew Frye this afternoon report on remarks by Warren Buffett during a trip through India, with the octogenarian sage remarking that private trading in social networking sites such as Facebook is overvaluing some of the properties.

“Most of them will be overpriced,” Buffett said of investments in social networking sites in the private secondary markets that have sprung up in the last couple of years, such as Second Market and SharesPost.

This has been a banner week for Buffettisms on technology: On Monday he reiterated why he’s generally stayed away from the uncertainty in tech stocks during his long investing career.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Google acquired English price comparison company BeatThatQuote.com today for more than $61 million.

BeatThatQuote helps its website visitors search, compare and apply for lower rates and cheaper prices on a variety of products including financial, insurance, and legal services, utilities, and shopping.

The newly acquired company’s managing director John Paleomylites announced the deal on BeatThatQuote’s homepage:

BeatThatQuote.com was sold to Google for GBP37.7 million. We think this deal is a tremendous opportunity for our company to develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK.

Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google. We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.

BeatThatQuote has been growing rapidly — it is currently bringing in more pageviews than popular social networking company Facebook and was the fastest growing website in the U.K. in 2007.

That popularity makes it likely Google will roll the company into its new deals service as it seeks to stay ahead of an increasingly crowded and diverse crop of hot startups such as Groupon and LivingSocial.

Indeed, Google’s been on quite a shopping spree for companies it thinks has potential. The search behemoth nabbed 48 different properties in 2010, and Google’s vice president of corporate development David Lawee said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Saturday that the company will be similarly aggressive this year.

It wants its new companies to continue innovating, he said.

“If you’re en entrepreneur and you come to Google, your days as an entrepreneur are not over,” said Lawee. “Bringing small entrepreneurial teams into Google who have a strong vision for what they want to do has been highly successful for us.”

Companies: beatthatquote, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Livingsocial, The Wall Street Journal

People: David Lawee

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals