LinkedIn opens trading amid buying frenzy

Social networking website for professionals, LinkedIn opened to a tumultuous reception at the New York Stock Exchange which sent its shares to more than double the float price.

Investors of all hues, retail, speculators, and institutional rushed to grab a slice of the eight-year-old company, the first in the social networking space to go public even as the likes of Facebook and Twitter remain in the wings as private companies.

At its peak yesterday, LinkedIn was valued at about $12 billion, and the 20.1-per cent stake still held by the company's founder and chairman Reid Hoffman was valued at $2.4 billion – about four times what he expected earlier this month.

The company had initially proposed a float price in the range of $32 to $35, but, on heavy investor demand, the stock was revised on Wednesday night at $45. A few hours into the trading, the stock scaled to over $125, a debut that led to inevitable comparisons with tech stock flotations at the height of the dot.com bubble in 1999 and 2000.

Dismissing the comparison, Jeff Weiner, the chief executive, who owns a stake valued at $280 million said at one point during the opening stampede, "The fundamentals of the companies that are category leaders in terms of their respective social platforms are very, very different from what we saw in the late 90s and early 2000s.''

He said personally he was not even thinking twice about where the price was and leaving money on the table or even anything remotely along those lines.