LinkedIn's CEO Discusses Q4 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
LinkedIn Corporation (
)
Q4 2011 Earnings Call
February 9, 2012 5:00 PM ET
Executives
Matt Sonefeldt – Investor Relations
Jeff Weiner – Chief Executive Officer
Steve Sordello – Chief Financial Officer
Analysts
Justin Post – Bank of America-Merrill Lynch
Mark Mahaney – Citigroup
Mark May – Barclays
Scott Davidson – Morgan Stanley
Doug Anmuth – JP Morgan
Aaron Kessler – Raymond James
Michael Graham – Canaccord
Brian Pitz – UBS
Presentation
Operator
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Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to LinkedIn Fourth Quarter 2011 Earning Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we’ll conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions)
As a reminder, this conference call may be recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Matt Sonefeldt. Sir, you may begin.
Matt Sonefeldt
Good afternoon. Welcome to LinkedIn’s fourth quarter of 2011 earnings call. Joining me today to discuss our results are CEO, Jeff Weiner; and CFO, Steve Sordello.
Before we begin, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that during the course of this call, management will make forward-looking statements which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. These include statements relating to expected number of growth and number of engagements, number of searchers by our members, expectations regarding our product offerings, results of our research and development efforts including the acceleration of our product deployment process, revenue including revenue growth rate, adjusted EBITDA, depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, share dilution, taxes, as well as sales channel mix, hiring plans, R&D expense and expectations for certain markets in the first quarter.
Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. A discussion of risks and uncertainties related to our business is contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the section entitled Risk Factors in our quarterly and annual reports, and we refer you to these filings.
Also, I’d like to remind you that during the course of this conference call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures in talking about the company’s performance. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are provided in the tables in the press release.
This conference call is also being broadcast on the Internet and is available through the Investor Relations section of the LinkedIn website.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Jeff.
Jeff Weiner
Thank you, Matt, and welcome to today’s conference call. I will start by summarizing the operating results for the fourth quarter and the full year, and I’ll recap some of the highlights and key milestones since our last call. I’ll then turn it over to Steve for a more detailed look at the numbers and outlook.
2011 was a landmark year for LinkedIn. We further strengthened our position as the pre-eminent professional network on the web. Our members engaged with our platform at record levels and we achieved continued significant growth across all three of our revenue streams.
For Q4, overall revenues grew 105% to a record $168 million, marking sixth straight quarter in which our revenues at least doubled over the prior year. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $34 million, which translates the non-GAAP EPS of $0.12. For the full year 2011, revenues were a record $522 million, up 115% and we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $99 million or non-GAAP EPS of $0.35.
We exited 2011 with member engagement metrics exhibiting the right growth trends. Our cumulative membership grew 60% year-over-year to 145 million at the end of the fourth quarter and we continue to add more than two members every second, and I’m pleased to announce that at the end of January we surpassed the 150 million member milestone.
With regard to engagement, our internal measures showed unique member visit for LinkedIn in Q4 grew 67% year-over-year, even faster than the rate of membership growth and member page used in Q4 grew faster still at 77%, marking healthy progression in our key engagement metrics.
LinkedIn introduced the wave of new products and services in 2011, all designed around our core member value propositions of professional identity insights and everywhere. First, we greatly increased the size of the LinkedIn network. More than 60 million new professionals have joined LinkedIn since the start of 2011.
To put that into perspective, that exceeds the total number of professionals on LinkedIn in our first six and half years of existence. The majority of our member growth in 2011 came from international markets in part the result of our efforts to localize the site around the world.
Today 60% of LinkedIn members reside outside the United States. We launched eight local languages last year and thus far in 2012 we’ve added Czech and Dutch to the growing list, bringing our overall total to 16. We also opened several addition offices outside the United States in 2011 bringing the total number of global offices including in U.S. to 22.
Our continued global expansion has further solidified LinkedIn’s position as the leading professional network on the web. And the larger the network, easier it is for our members to connect, find and be found. In 2011 LinkedIn members did nearly 4.2 billion professionally oriented searches on the platform reinforcing our position as the definitive professional search engine.
During the year we also revamped the look of the profile page and added the ability for members to highlight skills and volunteer experiences. And we created new products for students and recent grads who remain our fastest-growing demographic.
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