No doubt. LinkedIn has been a standout compared to its high-profile social Internet brethren, which the market has completely soured on of late.
LinkedIn shares are trading at $108, up 140% since going public in May 2011.
Meanwhile, Zynga has seen its stock nosedive 73% from its $10 IPO price, and Facebook shares are languishing 45% below their debut price of $38 last May. Given the divergent way LinkedIn shares are performing, we thought we'd take a deeper look at its numbers and compare them to Facebook's.
We know the two companies are not in the same business, but they're both recently public Internet companies and they're essentially the largest social networks (though LinkedIn's content is more professional and work related).
Here is a look at the stats from both companies, based on their recently-released second quarter reports.
The takeaways is that LinkedIn is a smaller, leaner, monetization machine whereas Facebook could use some toning up.
Some of the highlights that you should take note of include the more money LinkedIn makes per user. LinkedIn makes $1.30 per user, per hour vs Facebook, which makes 6 cents, by the same measure. LinkedIn also spends a lot less on R&D than Facebook and is growing faster.
Interestingly, the gap between their market caps are shrinking. And, if you compare enterprise values, there's even less of a gap because Facebook has $10 billion of cash on hand.
Stock Price at close Friday
Facebook: $21.09
LinkedIn: $108.51
IPO price
Facebook: $38
LinkedIn: $45
Change in price since IPO
Facebook: - 44.5%
LinkedIn: +141.1%
Number of monthly average users
Facebook: 995 million
LinkedIn: 174 million
Growth of users year/year
Facebook: 29.2%
LinkedIn: 50%
Revenue in Q2
Facebook: $1.2 billion
LinkedIn: $228.2 million
Revenue growth year/year
Facebook: 32.3%
LinkedIn: 89%
Total 2011 revenue
Facebook: $3.71 billion
LinkedIn: $522.19 million
Ad revenue
Facebook: $992 million
LinkedIn: $63.1 million
Ad revenue growth year/year
Facebook: 27.8%
LinkedIn: 64%
Cost per customer acquistion
Facebook: $4.29
LinkedIn: $1.30
R+D investments
Facebook: $545 million
LinkedIn: $60.08 million
Year/year growth in R+D
Facebook: 1457%
LinkedIn: 100%
Percentage of revenue that R+D
Facebook: 46%
LinkedIn: 26%
Cash on hand
Facebook: $10.19 billion
LinkedIn: $286.38 million
Enterprise value
Facebook: $28.17 billion
LinkedIn: $10.5 billion
Market cap
Facebook: $40.25 billion
LinkedIn: $11.15 billion
Revenue per user per hour
Facebook: 6 cents
LinkedIn: $1.30
Time spent on site by average user
Facebook: 400 minutes per month
LinkedIn: 18 minutes per month
2012 revenue outlooks
Facebook: None from the company
LinkedIn: $915 million to $925 million
Consensus EPS for 2012
Facebook: 49 cents
LinkedIn: 69 cents
(Image sources: Eastsideboxing.com and sanjosearthurmurray.com)
