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Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

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Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#661

Post by moon_of_moon »

therein wrote: post #627
moon_of_moon wrote: post #271

$26 Billion is actually fair : The question is, would it provide earnings of $2.6 Billion per year discounted over the next ten years? I think so. Keep in mind, MS sells $90 billion of product and services a year, so we're talking less than 3% of that. (MS cost of revenue is about a third of revenues!) 1] First imagine LinkedIn used as the primary sales channel for MS products. Head of sales is probably salivating. 2…

> $26 Billion is actually fair : The question is, would it provide earnings of $2.6 Billion per year discounted over the next ten years? > Keep in mind, MS sells $90 billion of product and services a year, so we're talking less than 3% of that. (MS cost of revenue is about a third of revenues!) 30%

Annualized over 10 years. One of the ways you value a company is by discounting the future cashflows.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#662

Post by linkregister »

riazrizvi wrote: post #457
mrweasel wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It think the negativity is mostly due to the price tag. If I was a shareholder I would be furious over Microsoft paying $26billion for a money losing company. Even if Microsoft see some potential the rest of us aren't, and we have to assume that they are, they still need to find a way to turn a profit on the deal. Given that they bought Nokia, only to shut it down, more or less, it would be reasonable for the shareho…

I wonder how much of the value was attributed to vanity metrics like the number of times people check the site? An inflated number since LinkedIn started using short term exploitation tactics like sending Notification Badges for your contacts' Birthdays and Work Anniversaries. Personally I also feel fleeced out of an outrageous monthly subscription that was sneaked through an undeclared AppStore transaction (I got >5…

Can you talk more about this sneaked-in subscription? That's really concerning.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#663

Post by elsewhen »

preetish wrote: post #637

My take on this: - Better integration of Dynamics CRM with LinkedIn - A move towards social selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Enriched LinkedIn news-feed with updates from work life (example: meetings, projects) - Better Cortana (personal assistant) that can help you professionally - Integration of Office suite with LinkedIn learning - Usage of Bing for professional search

this pcworld article claims that better cortana is the key driver: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3083016/software-productivity...

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#664

Post by SilasX »

ssharp wrote: post #635
dimino wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be great , if you're right, because this is how we get to a place where we maintain our resumé in one place (LinkedIn) and don't have to play the whole "Please upload your resumé. Now please enter in all the details of your resumé." hellhole.

There is a Fortune 200 headquartered in my area that, by far, has the worst application process and software I've ever seen. Aside from REQUIRING you to type in information like your high school's address and your high school GPA, they also have pre-screening booby-traps which you may need to lie to get past (e.g. my wife was applying for an HR job there and they asked if she had a bachelor's degree in HR, which she…

I'm pretty sure they have a "real" hiring channel that bypasses this; there's no way they could function if everyone had to go through that without error.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#665

Post by Theo59 »

whack wrote: post #502

This is a fantastic move for Microsoft, and IMO, a premature throwing-in-the-towel moment for LinkedIn. At $26B, that's less than 10% of Facebook's market-cap. That's a steal for the world's biggest Social-Professional Network, and the medium through which most recruiting could conceivably happen in the future. Given that MS currently has no social presence at all, but has a fantastic enterprise sales channel, Linked…

MS does have a 1-2% stake in Facebook lest we forget

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#666

Post by boundring »

tajen wrote: post #293
_yosefk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS could, erm, look up those org charts on linkedin.com for $0 (indeed very useful at times.) What value is added by buying LinkedIn for $26G? How owning LinkedIn is going to add $1-1.5B/year (assuming eventually you want a P/E between, I dunno, 15 and 25), to MS's revenue? (I'm sure someone at MS has an answer to this, it's just that they haven't been tremendously successful in the past with their big acquisitions;…

> MS could look up those org charts That's the best remark in the whole thread. Employee poking at competitors. Sales teams looking up the right people to connect with. Thanks to the LinkedIn share button, like Facebook, they can have parts of your browsing history. I don't even know whether the purchase should be allowed.

Wow.

In terms of data mining this is still a huge price-point, but obviously some team at MS projected the benefits vs expense.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#667

Post by dkarapetyan »

threeseed wrote: post #195
ravivyas wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, plus Slideshare can be a massive boost to Powerpoint.

Actually there hasn't been enough talk about the companies LinkedIn acquired. Connectifier - recruiting intelligence Lynda - online learning FlipTop - predictive marketing RunHop - personalised content Refresh.io - relationship content surfacing These could be huge additions to Azure, Office 365, Bing, Cortana etc.

Have you ever been on the ground floor of a synergistic acquisition? In theory it should be easy to integrate data sources and reap the benefits. In practice what happens are year long efforts and organizational re-structurings every 3-6 months depending on what the cadence is with the end result being people being shuffled around and no benefits being reaped.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#668

Post by martyvis »

marme wrote: post #644
_yosefk wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS could, erm, look up those org charts on linkedin.com for $0 (indeed very useful at times.) What value is added by buying LinkedIn for $26G? How owning LinkedIn is going to add $1-1.5B/year (assuming eventually you want a P/E between, I dunno, 15 and 25), to MS's revenue? (I'm sure someone at MS has an answer to this, it's just that they haven't been tremendously successful in the past with their big acquisitions;…

MS bought skype just to stop google from buying they. Google made a big for skype and MS swooped in and outbid them. They never had any real plans for skype they just dont want to allow google to gain near monopoly in the consumer VOIP market. Which seems strange for MS to care about since they were not in this sector previously but Ballmer just held such a huge grudge with google and did it out of spite. Really show…

Skype for Business (and it's predecessor Lync) owns corporate voice and collaboration market

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#669

Post by boundring »

maxxxxx wrote: post #603
oblio wrote: post #150

The comments here are hilarious, they really reveal the IT bubble. The only real complaint about this purchase would be that LinkedIn was overvalued. And I wouldn't bet on that since Microsoft surely sent a big team of their brightest cookies to make a valuation of the company. But other than that, LinkedIn fits: it is a corporate social network, if you will. I know that "corporate social network" is almost an oxymor…

I am not sure what their goals are with this but they are definitely showing that they don't want to be in the technology business anymore.

Nnnnnnnnnn-maybe.

Seems more like a partial swing towards enterprise-emphasis.

Re: Microsoft to acquire LinkedIn for $26B

#670

Post by dredmorbius »

msie wrote: post #525

I just can't imagine 26 billion dollars. That's beyond any human's comprehension.

You do it through comparisons.

A typical SF Bay Area core house is running close to $1 million these days.

A thousand such homes would be a billion. That's a small town, or a particular (upscale) San Francisco neighborhood, say, PacHeights or Cole Valley. Home to about 3,000 - 4,000 people.

Twenty six neighborhoods would be the full LinkedIn value. Call it 26,000 homes in the San Francisco or Peninsula area. Most of Palo Alto, and a neighboring town, say, Menlo Park, or Redwood City. About 75,000 - 100,000 people. One eighth of San Francisco.

The typical new car is, roughly, $26,000. A thousand of them them is $26 million. A typical freeway lane can see 2,000 cars an hour per lane, or, say for a large 10-lane freeway, 20,000 cars per hour. If you filled that highway to capacity for just over 2 days, you'd see $26 billion worth of (new) cars flowing past.

A 150,000 square foot school at $300/sqft construction costs (via random DDGing) runs about $45 million. You could build about 570 such schools.

Annual operating expenses of a large high school might run about $30 million. You could fund ~870 such schools for a year (or one school for 870 years).

Annual petroleum consumption in the US is about 19.6 million barrels per day. The LinkedIn purchase prices would cover 26 days of $50/bbl oil for the US.

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