LinkedIn set for Trading, Viadeo shelves IPO.
Posted on Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 at 11:40 am
Professional social networking giant LinkedIn is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange from Thursday. LinkedIn has 100 million users spread over 200 countries. It assists create business contacts, search for jobs and find potential clients. 
LinkedIn is pricing its IPO of 7,840,000 shares at a price of $32 and $35 per share, raising $274 million in the offering. The response of the street to the offering is expected to be strong. The favorable factors for the company are its growing revenue. The company’s revenue of Q1 2011 was up by 110% to $39.3 million. And the net income was $2.08 million compared to $1.81 during the same quarter last year. The company’s hiring solutions mainly contributed to the increase. This is a paid offering, helping recruiters search for professionals. Whether LinkedIn can accelerate this revenue remains to be seen.
Chairman and co-founder Reid Hoffman is the largest shareholder of LinkedIn owning 21.4%.The other major shareholder are Sequoia Capital and Greylock
Earlier IPOs of the tech world this year have not done well. The Chinese social networking giant RenRen, which priced its IPO at $14 per share, slipped to below offer price son after trading began at NYSE.
While LinkedIn is preparing for its IPO, Reuters reports that that Viadeo, the world’s second-largest professional network, is putting off its IPO plans to focus on growing its core business