LinkedIn to Sell Shares; Eyeing Expansion

LinkedIn Corp’s (NYSE:LNKD) Chief Executive Officer and employees are planning to sell over 6.7 million shares as they attempt to gather gains from a quick run up in market value at the online professional networking services.

Jeff Weiner, the Chief Executive Officer of LinkedIn, plans to sell over 372,000 shares and most of these shares are among the company’s management. In a regulatory filing on Monday, LinkedIn listed the number of shares that are about to be sold. Almost after two years, Weiner is expecting to gather a premium of about $29 million for the company. This figure is based on the closing price of shares at $78.49 on Monday.

Linked sold its shares at $45 per share in an IPO that took place in May. Investors feel that LinkedIn is yet in its initial stages of growth as it attempts to reshape the way users try to move forward in their careers. LinkedIn, since its commencement in 2003, has attracted over 135 million members who on the website have posted their current and past job details, and also seek out other jobs.

Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, even after the completion of his stock sale will still own about 2.3 million company shares. However, Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and co-founder of LinkedIn, will not be selling any of the 19 million shares that are owned by him. That stake is worth almost $1.5 billion as of now.

The heap sales of Stock will determine investor’s faith in the company by almost doubling the amount of shares available on the stock market. LinkedIn in its initial public offerings sold close to 9 million shares. Including the companies fund raising effort it expects to sell about 8 million shares.

To facilitate finance its growth the online professional networking company plans to sell nearly 1.3 million additional shares. The company earlier this month announced it plans to sell its shares. However, it has not spelled as to how many shares it would offer until Monday. The sale is expected to raise about $100 million to support the $367 million that LinkedIn already posses with the end of the third fiscal quarter.

Majority of the shares in this offering is being sold by the three venture capital firms that had invested in LinkedIn prior to the initial public offerings. Bain Capital Venture Integral Investors sketches to sell all LinkedIn’s 3.7 billion shares that it owns. Besserner Venture Partners plans to sell about 11 percent out of the 4.6 million shares that it owns and Greylock Venture plans to sell about 10 percent out of the 14 million LinkedIn shares that it owns.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.