Microsoft To Acquire LinkedIn For $26.2 Billion

Microsoft has announced that it will acquire LinkedIn for $196 per share, a 49.5% premium to LinkedIn's closing share price on Friday.


Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and LinkedIn Corporation (NYSE: LNKD) on Monday announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire LinkedIn for $196 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at $26.2 billion, inclusive of LinkedIn’s net cash. LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence. Jeff Weiner will remain CEO of LinkedIn, reporting to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Reid Hoffman, chairman of the board, co-founder and controlling shareholder of LinkedIn, and Weiner both fully support this transaction. The transaction is expected to close this calendar year.

According to Microsoft's press release, Morgan Stanley is acting as the tech giant's exclusive financial advisor, with Qatalyst Partners and Allen & Company advising LinkedIn.

What does everyone think of this deal? Out of curiosity, can anyone estimate the size of the fees for a deal like this? Particularly for Qatalyst and Allen & Co.

http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to…

 

Honestly, I don't understand why they're acquiring it. Linkedin is a facebook for professionals. Instead of acquiring firms that can make their products better or have exclusive features they buy a website. I would agree if they bought it for a billion or two but 29 billion sounds wasteful. Might be something ordinary people can't see.

 

"Linkedin is a facebook for professionals."

You know Facebook had $1.5 billion in net income this last quarter, right? I know LinkedIn wasn't profitable in 2014 or 2015 (or the last quarter), but that doesn't mean it won't be one day. Just for disclosure, I didn't toss monkey shit at you and I don't think your comment was all that bad. I don't think it's a great investment either, but what do I know? It's just a dent in Microsoft's $105.5 billion of cash equivalents. I'm interested to see how it plays out.

 

Very interesting. Bold move on Microsoft's end, but they can afford it. Will be interested to see if/how they integrate it with Office, which I assume is going to happen. Having integrated functionality with Outlook is one angle I could think of. Whether it'll end up being profitable, given their already dominant status in the corporate world, is debatable.

 

msft is the polar opposite of aapl in that they rarely incubate ideas and instead try to purchase growth via M&A (per wikipedia, 196 acquisitions by msft vs aapl's 78). I think there are certainly potential synergies since microsoft office is already in most large enterprises (save the open source people of the world and design firms), so they're already plugged into the business community. it will be interesting to see how this pans out. I've had my doubts about social media but microsoft is a well-run company, and it wouldn't shock me if they made this work well.

total fees

$10 to 20 million to Morgan Stanley $40 to 45 million to Qatalyst and Allen & Co.

new poll: over/under on yield for these bonds? if they're 10y debt, I'll set it at 2.25.

 

The price means little to me, but the potential for Microsoft and LinkedIn integration is fantastic. Being able to link LinkedIn and Outlook accounts alone allows for so many possibilities.

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
CRE:

The price means little to me, but the potential for Microsoft and LinkedIn integration is fantastic. Being able to link LinkedIn and Outlook accounts alone allows for so many possibilities.

You could link multiple email addresses (personal + work) to one linked In account in the past but it was painful. Agreed the synergies likely coming from linking up with outlooks address features will be awesome.

 
Best Response

Allen & Co. hires connected kids. That tends to be the clean, fresh-faced kids from good families who go to good schools. This isn't the scrappy hardworking second-generation kid who broke his back to get into Princeton. It's also not the old money like the Brahmins or families from the Social Register.

It's the kid whose family has been going to Stanford or UVA for four generations. The ones who come from quietly strong political families in Arizona, New Mexico, and California; who went to Andover, Choate, Thacher, Webb, and instead of going with their classmates into the Ivies, went back to the flagship state school (U of Arizona) because great-great-granddaddy was one of the first student body presidents ever before going on to be a senator or ambassador or something.

What I'm trying to paint here is that a lot of really qualified kids who sent in an application after finding out the firm's strong dealflow and reputation are always mystified how they never got an interview there while they wound up with offers at GS, Evercore, and JPM.

It's less about 'who are the very best interns we can hire' and more about 'who comes from the right people' and 'how can we get the kids who will best fit'. Since like attracts like, it's very often the sons and daughters of past or present employees, clients, or people otherwise economically or politically connected to the firm.

From what I've seen (on resumes from summers trying to lateral for full-time) and heard, summers don't get really technical work; it's a real resume-builder in that the firm's name carries a lot of weight and chances are you can put a headline deal in your bullet points, but the exposure you get is often qualitative and on the strategic advisory side rather than the execution side.

The ones who succeeded trying to lateral (e.g. the girl who went to BX [PJT] after summering there) self-taught modeling and/or were able to really spin their story favorably.

I am permanently behind on PMs, it's not personal.
 

This is actually an incredibly compelling acquisition as it pertains to a) the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform and b) the standard Microsoft Office suite. Dynamics is compelling because it provides a social aspect and much higher user engagement level than your standard CRM platform and gives Microsoft a clear differentiation to the other CRM offerings (Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, etc.). There's much less of an economic value with Office since it's already the dominant productivity tool for enterprises, but nonetheless adds a ton of value, especially around Outlook contacts.

From a financial perspective, the deal is cheaper than the 48% premium implies. Remember that LNKD was trading in the $250-260ish range just 6 months ago and deal looks to be about ~5.9x EV / FY17 revs, which is not crazy by any means in the tech world. By comparison Zillow trades at 5.8x, FB at 9.2x, and NFLX at 5.0x. Final point is that cash is cheap for Microsoft also - they already priced $13bn of IG bonds (AA+) in late 2015 and shouldn't have any problems pricing new debt, especially given the oversubscription of the Dell / EMC bonds.

Overall, a potentially transformative deal at an acceptable price point for a company with a strong history of good execution (albeit less so lately).

 

Oh definitely smart move from a LNKD perspective. I think it's clearly indicative that they were going to have trouble meeting or exceeding the Street's growth expectations and the transformation from a high growth company to a profitable one is always much much harder than it is at face value.

Also good because now ad revenue becomes much less of a priority (which was originally supposed to be the main driver of revenue growth, as 90% of revenue comes from corporate solutions) and they can focus on building out their increasingly comprehensive suite of offerings that will complement dynamics CRM and office 365.

 

It's kind of crazy, thinking that Microsoft is buying Linkedin, it makes sense for LKND to sell, though I thought it would have been GOOG or FB - also the company cultures are similar. MSFT used to struggle a few years back, when I recruited for tech jobs last few years and interviewed at MSFT, LKND (oddly I didnt get this), GOOG and a few startups... it was between GOOG and MSFT and GOOG came out on top. But oddly MSFT (and JNJ) are the only AAA today.

 

I just recovered my losses!

Probably as a standalone company, $26 bn isn't too much. But they probably going to stir the pot so will see if they extract synergies or just make a mud pie.

Better than Nokia purchase, or GOOG's Motorola patient purchases.

 
  1. Microsoft isn't paying cash for LinkedIn.

Yes it's worse - they are borrowing money for it. Hoffman is getting cashed out and can take the money and run, he sold a money losing website to the greater fool.

  1. People are severely underestimating the value of LinkedIn's data. This was as much a data play by Microsoft as it was a social networking/advertisement play.

Yes it is "play" I.e fooling around and not being a serous business

 
Pio nono:

1. Microsoft isn't paying cash for LinkedIn.

Yes it's worse - they are borrowing money for it. Hoffman is getting cashed out and can take the money and run, he sold a money losing website to the greater fool.

2. People are severely underestimating the value of LinkedIn's data. This was as much a data play by Microsoft as it was a social networking/advertisement play.

Yes it is "play" I.e fooling around and not being a serous business

I think I agree with Pio here, linkedin has seemed to decline since every university of phoenix grad joined to land an 80k job with a Starbucks barista background. much of the updates i see now are rehashed facebook motivational garbage.

What this means to me is the original vision of linkedin has given way to more social media than social networking and will try to go up against facebook as ads targeting people with a job, ie greater discretionary income.

i don't see recruiting being worth it as indeed.com appears to be much more effective and facebook could easily match connections/jobs if this segment was valueable.

with this i don't see the price paid for admission worth it.

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!
 

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