LinkedIn reported a 45% spike in third-quarter revenue on gains from the career networking website’s growing job listings business. Here are some of the key points from Thursday’s third-quarter earnings report.
What you need to know: LinkedIn said it had $568 million in third-quarter revenue, up from $393 million during the same period last year and $11 million above what analysts were expecting. But, the company also reported a third-quarter loss of $4.3 million, or 3 cents a share, which is worse than the $3.4 million loss in the same quarter a year earlier.
Looking ahead, LinkedIn predicted between $600 million and $605 million in sales in the fourth quarter, which came in slightly below analysts’ expectations. Regardless, shares of LinkedIn (LNKD) rose 2.3% in after-hours trading after the company’s earnings. That gain followed a 1.7% uptick during afternoon trading on Thursday. LinkedIn helped put an end to the recent streak of tech companies whose stock have fallen following an earnings release. Shares in both Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR) dipped after reporting earnings earlier this week.
The big number: LinkedIn’s higher revenue was driven by a 45% gain from its job listings division, which took in $345 million in sales. The company bragged about its new “Limited Listings” service, which aggregates job listings from other sites using technology the company picked up in its acquisition of job search startup Bright earlier this year. LinkedIn said its network now includes two million job listings, which is up from the one million listings the company said it had after the second quarter.
LinkedIn’s other two businesses, marketing and premium subscriptions, each increased third-quarter sales more than 40%, to $109 million and $114 million, respectively.
What you might have missed: The networking website continues to increase its user numbers, reporting 28% membership growth in the third quarter to hit 332 million members. Meanwhile, CEO Jeff Weiner added that LinkedIn’s mobile user numbers are growing at nearly triple the rate of overall unique visitors and that mobile traffic now accounts for almost half of the site’s total traffic.
