Roulston's Social Media Consultant on LinkedIn IPO and Valuation

Roulston Research's Social Media Consultant Rob Enderle has an interesting perspective on LinkedIn's initial public offering. The company sold 7.84 million shares at $45 last Thursday and shares soared 109% on the first day of trading. Rob states, "The feeding frenzy surrounding LinkedIn is largely the result of an imbalance between the number of investors and the amount of equity available for them to invest in. In short we have a supply/demand imbalance which is driving the stock higher than the company performance can sustain. This has likely created a bubble and a problem for the companies coming after because LinkedIn’s prospectus anticipates slowing revenue growth and uncertain profits going forward which could cause this bubble to break prematurely and before the other IPOs can come to market.

The big problem for the category is that the sustaining revenue that supported a similar trend surrounding Google’s IPO has largely been consumed by Google and Microsoft leaving it unavailable to the Social Networking vendors. Granted through Microsoft Facebook has some extra leverage but Microsoft isn’t Google and the uplift they can provide, as a result, is much more limited. Large IPOs also drive venture investment into competitors and social networking is still in its infancy and the combination of privacy concerns and legislation could cause any one of these companies to fail if the right, and increasingly likely, set of scenarios were to take place. Given we are, in the US entering an election period and the topic has already become an issue, these risks appear to be increasing at the moment. In short the over valuation of the social networking companies is the result of a feeding frenzy on a limited resource and while I believe we have some headroom through the Facebook IPO, there is increasing risk it will collapse prematurely. That should be factored into related investment decisions."


Rob Enderle is President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, a forward looking emerging technology advisory firm. He specializes in providing rapid perspectives and suggested tactics and strategies to a large number of clients dealing with rapidly changing global events.