LinkedIn Corporation is one of our top 17 IPOs to watch for 2011, and it has now formally filed for its IPO. The social networking site for professionals has filed to sell up to $175 million in common stock in the initial public offering and it plans to list on the NASDAQ or on the New York Stock Exchange.
LinkedIn has an extensive investor group including Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, European Founders Fund, The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS), The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYS: MHP) and a unit of SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) called SAP Ventures. Some of its angel investors are Marc Andreessen, Andrew Anker, Robert Clarkson, Rob DeSantis, Tom Gruber,Josh Kopelman, Joe Kraus Peter Thiel.
Formal terms were not listed but the underwriters were named as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan as the book-runners; co-managers are listed as Allen & Company and also as UBS.
The company is the largest professional social network and it claims more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories. The company showed that net revenues were $120.127 million for all of 2009and the first nine-months of 2010 were $161.403 million in sales versus $80.794 million for the first nine-months of 2009.
Facebook is the chicken and egg analogy here. This will likely bring Facebook closer to an IPO, and it was that $50 billion valuation of Facebook that is believed to have cleared the way for LinkedIn to get its IPO process formally started. This should bring that Facebook IPO closer to fruition than what Mark Zuckerberg has tried to communicate.
Keep in mind that terms have not yet been set in this offering other than the nominal $175 million. It could end up being far more than that. The full S-1 filing is here.
JON C. OGG
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