LinkedIn acquisitions in numbers: $175m for Bizo is biggest buy yet for cautious company
LinkedIn picked up San Francisco-based b2b marketing company Bizo for $175m yesterday, the most expensive acquisition to date for the social network.
In a time of regular million dollar acquisitions by other internet companies, billion dollar buys by the likes of Facebook and Google, and Apple revealing in its earnings call yesterday that it completed 29 acquisitions in the past nine months, LinkedIn is frugal in comparison when it comes to splashing the cash.
Bizo provides technology and products for targeting the right audiences using online marketing tools such as display advertising, social and analytics. For that kind of know-how LinkedIn is paying around 90 per cent cash and 10 per cent stock.
It might not sound quite as exciting as the almost science-fiction-like technology of Oculus, the virtual reality developer bought by Facebook, or Deepmind, the artificial intelligence company acquired by Google, but its a perfect fit for LinkedIn's business market.
It is particularly picky about buying companies. Bizo is only the twelfth company snapped up by LinkedIn in the eight-year history of the company, all of the deals taking place in the last four, and this latest deal follows just a week after it picked up web app Newsle for an undisclosed sum.
The social network could be coming round to the idea of creating growth via acquisitions.
Its deals are certainly getting bigger.
Although it's never made more than three deals in a year, we are only just over half way through 2014.
And, LinkedIn deals tend to be spread across the year, evenly split between the first half of the year and the second half.
The three months ahead, August, September and October have previously been deal-making months for LinkedIn.
Its total acquisition spend each year is also on the rise. With a slight dip in 2013, LinkedIn could be looking to make up for this, despite 2014 already being a bumper year for spending.
LinkedIn's share price opened over half a percentage point higher today on the news and is currently peaking at nearly four per cent higher.
With investors onboard, what's to stop a spending spree?