Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

SecondMarket Unseals LinkedIn Pricing Now That It's Public

Newly public LinkedIn, which is now pulling down something like 130 percent more than when it first became available, was until recently traded as a private company on secondary markets like SharesPost and SecondMarket. It’s the first actively traded company to make that transition.

This morning SecondMarket, which usually doesn’t disclose much in the way of details of its business, published LinkedIn pricing dating back to April 2010. LinkedIn most recently traded for $35 on SecondMarket in March. It was one of the most actively traded companies on SecondMarket, accounting for 7 percent of transactions in the fourth quarter of 2010.

That looks teensy now! LinkedIn priced its IPO shares at $45 and now is selling for more than $100.

As I wrote last night, the most recently disclosed price for shares of LinkedIn on SharesPost was $30.79 earlier this year.

SecondMarket offered the following statement:

“This is very good news for LinkedIn and a much-needed boost for the IPO market. It’s great to see a company go public when it makes strategic sense for the business, and we’re pleased that trading on SecondMarket helped contribute to a successful IPO. This IPO also underscores the point that even for an exciting, innovative company like LinkedIn, it can take nearly a decade before the time is right to go public.”

And here are the prices:

April 2010 – $14.50/share
May 2010 – $17
June 2010 – $17
July 2010 – $21.50
August 2010 – $23
September 2010 – $25
October 2010 – $23
November 2010 – $25
December 2010 – $25
January 2011 – $34
February 2011 – $35
March 2011 – $35

But opening day prices are still fluctuating, and as All Things D commenter cprincipe pointed out this morning, “Regardless of the $100K buy-in, secondary markets are still monopoly money. The test of how accurate secondary market valuations are won’t be today’s opening price for LinkedIn, it will be the closing price the day LinkedIn delivers its first quarterly report to investors.”

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work