Further, it offers marketing solutions products that enable enterprises and individuals the ability to advertise to its member base and allow marketers to reach potential customers according to various attributes, such as industry, function, seniority, company size, and others. In addition, the company provides talent solutions, including hiring solutions that enable enterprises and professional organizations to find, contact, and hire qualified passive and active candidates and learning and development solutions, which provide online education courses to make it for professionals to accelerate their careers and realize their potential by learning new skills. It also offers LinkedIn mobile applications across a range of platforms and languages, including iOS for iPhone and iPad, Android, Blackberry, Nokia Asha, and Windows Mobile and a public website that allows developers to integrate its content and services into their applications. The company, through its proprietary platform, allows members to create, manage, and share their professional identity online build and engage with their professional networks access shared knowledge and insights and find business opportunities. It's hard to tell how long it may take for profit margins to improve, but as long as the business keeps moving in the right direction, it should be only a matter of time until LinkedIn starts translating its growing sales into expanding margins.LinkedIn Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates an online professional network worldwide. Over the long term, however, LinkedIn has enormous room for growth, and reinvestment needs should decline as the company matures over the years. On the other hand, Wall Street tends to put a lot of attention on official earnings numbers, so the stock could remain volatile until accounting figures improve. Operating cash flows are firmly positive over the last several quarters, so the business remains healthy from a financial point of view. This means that, in spite of the rapidly growing sales, LinkedIn lost money on a net income level during the first half of 2015. LinkedIn is in heavy reinvestment mode, and recent acquisitions such as are hurting profit margins. This provides enormous room for growth for a company that is expected to generate nearly $2.9 billion in total sales in 2015. Management estimates that the total addressable market for LinkedIn could be worth around $115 billion in the long term. Marketing solutions is basically online advertising, and the business produces 20% of total revenue, with sales from this segment increasing 32% during the second quarter of 2015. This segment accounts for 18% of sales, and it delivered a year over year increase in revenue of 22% last quarter. LinkedIn members can opt-in to premium subscriptions to upgrade the service. LinkedIn has 37,425 companies using its services as of the last quarter, an increase of 33% from the same period last year. Page views grew 35% versus the second quarter in 2014, so engagement trends look encouragingly healthy. The company ended the second quarter of 2015 with 380 million members, an increase of 21% year over year. Companies and individual users want to go to a platform offering the most opportunities for business relationships and new jobs, and this provides a self-sustaining virtuous cycle of growth and increased competitive strength for LinkedIn. LinkedIn has the first-mover advantage in the industry, and the network effect means that the platform becomes more valuable as it grows in size over time. Besides, with practically no relevant competition in its main business, the company is the undisputed global leader in professional contacts and online recruiting. Unlike other companies in the social media business, which broadly depend on online advertising for most of their revenues, LinkedIn has a diversified business model. With this in mind, let's take a look at why I recently bought more LinkedIn stock. Putting too much attention on short-term price fluctuations is generally a bad idea, but it does make sense to review an investing thesis from time to time, especially when prices are moving against your position. The general market has been remarkably weak due to concerns over the economy in China, and LinkedIn stock continued falling to record lows for the year in the neighborhood of $175 per share currently. Things did not go as expected since then. Believing the decline was presenting an opportunity, I added to my LinkedIn position a couple of weeks ago. LinkedIn ( LNKD.DL) stock is on a tailspin lately, accumulating a loss of more than 35% from its highs of the last year.
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