LinkedIn Revenue Beats Expectations Despite Strong Dollar

LinkedIn, operator of the biggest social networking site for professionals, reported a better-than-expected 33 percent rise in revenue, driven by strong growth in its business serving recruiters.

The company’s shares surged by 10 percent in extended trading before quickly dropping into negative territory.

LinkedIn has been spending heavily to acquire businesses and build up its sales and development teams in an effort to leverage off LinkedIn.com’s 380 million members.

In its biggest deal yet, the company said in April it would pay $1.5 billion for Lynda.com, a leader in the fast-growing market for career training videos. Second-quarter revenue included a contribution of $18 million from Lynda.com.

“We believe this could be one of LinkedIn’s most transformational initiatives as it has the potential to improve the member experience across the platform,” Chief Executive Jeff Weiner said in a statement.

LinkedIn has also been investing to improve its mobile presence and is developing new products for China, where it now has about 10 million members, up from 4 million last February.

“If any U.S. based Internet company has a chance to succeed in China in the near term I think it’s LinkedIn,” Axiom Capital analyst Victor Anthony told Reuters.

LinkedIn, which gets 38 percent of its revenue from outside the United States, said that excluding the impact of the strong dollar its revenue would have risen 38 percent.

The average value of the dollar against a basket of currencies was 20 percent higher in the second quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter last year.

The company said revenue in its Talents Solutions business, which sells services to recruiters, rose 38 percent to $443 million in the three months ended June 30. The business, in the midst of an overhaul, accounted for 62 percent of total revenue in the quarter.

Revenue from premium subscriptions rose 22 percent.

LinkedIn said it had about 380 million members at the end of the quarter, an increase of about 30 million from the first quarter.

Excluding items, the company earned 55 cents per share. Analysts had expected earnings of 30 cents per share on revenue of $$679.8 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

LinkedIn said it expects full-year revenue of about $2.94 billion and an adjusted profit of about $2.19 per share. Analysts expected $1.93 per share on revenue of $2.91 billion.

Up to Thursday’s close of $227.15, LinkedIn’s shares had fallen about 1 percent this year.

(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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