LinkedIn shares rose $5.94 or 6.5% yesterday to $97.78 after a Goldman Sachs analyst downgraded the stock from buy to neutral. LinkedIn had just dipped below $90 on March 20th on a down day for the market, and many pundits expected a sharp buyback after the dip. Investors hadn’t expected Analyst Heath Terry to explain that LinkedIn had a “high perceived value” with recruiters and that its Corporate Hiring Solution product had large growth potential.
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LinkedIn is full of good news these days. Their stock is up nearly 200% over its IPO price, their CEO is impressing the street with a smart evaluation of the future of social and their growth has been incredible, at around 150 million users. To add to this, they are doing well internationally as evidenced by their recent announcement of hitting 1m users in Indonesia.
LinkedIn has announced that revenue has more than doubled in the last quarter and they’ve increased their 2012 revenues, and the stock has jumped accordingly. The social network reported $167.7 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, beating the average analyst estimate of $159.8 million in the quarter. The good news also comes at a time where people are piling into social media stocks, with Zynga hovering around 30% higher than it’s IPO price and LinkedIn now almost 200% over it’s $45 IPO price, placing it’s market cap at $8.67 billion.
Online video platform Brightcove is going public. In an SEC filing on Monday, the company set the price range for their public offering: 5 million shares of common stock at a range of $10 to $12 per share.
Last week, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney published a report identifying that Chinese suppliers of Kindle hardware are also in preparations to build an Amazon Kindle Phone. This comes soon after Amazon’s launch of their $200 Kindle Fire device and signals that Amazon is serious about extending their reach to customers to include not just the content they consume, but the hardware upon which they consume it. This is a transformation for the company and signals the potential for a transformation from e-retailer to a full-service content platform similar to Apple. So do you think Amazon has what it takes, and will you buy shares to ride the growth?
Netflix has been one of the leading video streaming and DVD delivery services on the web for years, but right now anybody in the online video space will tell you that Netflix is taking its turn in the hot seat — the stock is down from nearly 300 to around 78. The problems started in July, when CEO Reed Hastings — after 12 years of solid management — suddenly thrust a price increase at their nearly 25 million subscribers. Is now the time to buy the NFLX stock?
Over the course of two months, Netflix’s market value declined 57%, due to the dissatisfaction of its plan to separate services. As of last week, Netflix changed its tone and decided to yank the unpopular plan. Unfortunately, for Netflix, the damage already took a toll upon its stock. Facebook, on the other hand, still has the time to save itself from the type of damage incurred by Netflix.
Wilson admitted that he sold some Twitter stock, which doesn’t look too good for Twitter. Particularly since the disclosure occurs before an IPO, Fred Wilson down plays the fact that his firm has previously sold some of its Twitter shares.
