LNKD

LinkedIn beat the street's expectations by $0.16, reported revs in-line; guides Q1 and FY16 EPS and rev below consensus.

Here are the highlights: 

  • Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $0.94 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.16 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.78; revenues rose 34.0% year/year to $862 mln vs the $857.26 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
  • Co issues downside guidance for Q1, sees EPS of ~$0.55, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.74 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees Q1 revs of ~$820 mln vs. $866.50 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
  • Co issues downside guidance for FY16, sees EPS of ~$3.05-3.20, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $3.73 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; sees FY16 revs of $3.6-3.65 bln vs. $3.91 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate. 
  • In the quarter, cumulative members grew 19% to 414 million, unique visiting members grew 7% to an average of 100 million per month, and member page views grew 26%. This yielded 17% year over year growth in page views per unique visiting member, continuing a pattern of strong engagement growth over the past several quarters. Mobile in particular grew 3x faster than overall member activity, and now represents 57% of all traffic to LinkedIn.

For the current numbers LinkedIn did okay. They beat the expectations and that's the name of the game. However this company trades on their growth and as with any growth stock, cutting your guidance and forward growth (especially in this environment) is bad news. 

Going into today's report LNKD traded at a forward P/E (FY Dec 31, 2016) of 52.39 and enterprise Value/EBITDA(ttm) 100.63. The enterprise value/EBITDA # is just stupid insane for any company. Investors in companies like this are ignoring this info and simply buying a stock on its potential growth. As long as a stock is growing, numbers like this will continue to be ignored. When a stock like LNKD reports #'s that revise their growth lower and show their MAU is stuck at 100M it is going to get obliterated. That is exactly what happened. 

From a technical standpoint, LNKD looks like this: 

From the weekly and monthly charts you can see LNKD has broken down in a head and shoulder fashion and is likely going to test its 2013 breakout point of around $120. 

FELICIA

LinkedIn has spent the last four years enjoying a rise and an acceptance by investors that they were investing in the future growth of this social media company. Talking head after talking head came on television to defend the stock claiming it's got great management and they can "pull many levers" to optimize the growth. Well, how's that working out for you assholes? Way to pump and dump all over the little guys, again. 

💯Bye Felicia 💯

 

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