It can be said with certainty that LinkedIn’s IPO went much better than expected.
On Thursday, shares of LinkedIn doubled in early trade, as the popular social networking platform made its long-awaited Wall Street debut.
LinkedIn priced its initial public offering at $45 a share on Wednesday.
But once trading commenced Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol LNKD, shares soared to $83 before topping $90 at 10:30 am EST.
In the $90 range, LinkedIn’s value sits at roughly $8.5 billion.
“My suspicion is that valuations like the kind we’re seeing with LinkedIn will eventually even out over the course of the year as more social media firms file to go public,” Lee Simmons, editor of Hoovers, an IPO research service, told Mobile Marketing Watch on Wednesday.
Following today’s IPO, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner didn’t give CNBC what the network wanted to hear – that Wall Street may now be home to a new social media bubble.
“At the end of the day, it’s not about the share price — it’s about our continuing to execute,” Weiner told CNBC.
Clearly for the time being, investor enthusiasm for social media will be difficult – if not impossible – to mitigate, particularly as the shadow of potential Google, Facebook, and Twitter IPOs loom large.
