Preferite un rendimento del 200% al giorno o del 100% al mese?

La copertina dell'Economist della settimana scorsa era dedicata alla nuova bolla internet. Il settimanale inglese ha colpito nel segno ancora una volta: oggi tutti commentano i primi due giorni di contattazione di Linkedin (LNKD) che dopo un'IPO a 45 dollari nel primo giorno di contrattazioni hanno visto il prezzo quasi triplicare fino a chiudere con un modesto (si fa per dire) raddoppio (giovedì ha chiuso a 94,25 dollari, ieri a 93,09). I lettori di Alfa o beta? erano senz'altro preparati: ne avevamo parlato già il 29 gennaio.
Sull'IPO di Linkedin il NYTimes pubblica oggi un Op-Ed piuttostro severo:

The fact that the stock more than doubled on its first day of trading — something the investment bankers, with their fingers on the pulse of the market, absolutely must have known would happen — means that hundreds of millions of additional dollars that should have gone to LinkedIn wound up in the hands of investors that Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch wanted to do favors for. Most of those investors, I guarantee, sold the stock during the morning run-up. It’s the easiest money you can make on Wall Street.

As Eric Tilenius, the general manager of Zynga, wrote on Facebook: “A huge opening-day pop is not a sign of a successful I.P.O., but rather a massively mispriced one. Bankers are rewarding their friends and themselves instead of doing their fiduciary duty to their clients.”

There is nothing wrong with a small “pop” in the aftermath of an I.P.O.; investors, after all, don’t want to buy a stock that is going to go down immediately. But during the Internet bubble of the 1990s, the phenomenon of investment bankers wildly underpricing I.P.O.’s so that money could be diverted to favored investors got completely out of hand — stocks would sometimes rise 500 percent on the first day. It was obscene.(...)

Ever since the financial crisis, investment bankers have been constantly questioned about whether they have any larger social purpose besides making money. What they invariably say is that they play a critical role in capital formation, meaning that they help companies raise the money they need to grow and prosper.

The LinkedIn deal suggests something darker. The crisis hasn’t changed them a bit. They’re still just in it for themselves.

Ma quanto vale davvero Linkedin? Secondo alcuni decisamente molto meno di quanto non sia al momento valutata in borsa: un multiplo di 39 volte i ricavi (non i profitti!) sembra decisamente un po' ottimista...

Looking at the stock price, investors seem to have high expectations for the professional networking site. Shares of LinkedIn are now trading at nearly $100. That’s up 122 percent from the company’s offering price and 6 percent from the close on Thursday, the first day of trading.

At that level, LinkedIn is trading at just under 39 times last year’s sales. The valuation puts LinkedIn nearly on par with Facebook. On a secondary market, the social networking behemoth, which last year made $2 billion, has been valued as high as $80 billion — and that was before LinkedIn had its boffo debut.

Compared with another social networking stock, LinkedIn actually looks relatively cheap. At a recent $13, Renren, the Facebook of China that went public on the New York Stock Exchange in early May, is trading slightly below its offering price of $14. Even so, the company’s price-to-sales ratio is more than 70.

But LinkedIn trades at a significant premium to some technology stalwarts like Google. The search giant trades at less than 6 times sales. On some levels, that makes sense. After all, Google is a more mature business, and investors are often willing to pay more for younger, faster-growing companies.

Still, the metrics do give pause. Google’s market value is around $170 billion. But if the company traded at the same valuation at LinkedIn, it would be worth around $1.3 trillion — yes, trillion.

Anche guardando al rapporto prezzo/utili sembra logico aspettarsi che nei prossimi mesi le azioni di Linkedin non diano molte soddisfazioni a chi sta comprando su questi livelli: Let’s play with some numbers and assume $LNKD will grow at a phenomenal rate and will give it a PE ratio of 50 times earnings. What has to happen? For $LNKD to keep its $9B valuation and garner a 50PE, it has to grow earnings to 180M. Can it? Well, lets consider it’s best year ever was 2010 when it earned $15M…..yes, $15M.

We also have to note the company has said it will lose money in 2011.

Chi ha certamente guadagnato molto dall'IPO di Linkedin, oltre ai banchieri e ai clienti che hanno avuto la fortuna di vedersi assegnare le azioni a 45 dollari al mattino per poi venderle al triplo alla pomeriggio, sono 

gli investitori che avevano comprato le azioni sui mercati secondari, un fenomeno al quale avevamo dedicato alcuni post (uno, due e tre):

Newly public LinkedIn, which is now pulling down something like 130 percent more than when it first became available, was until recently traded as a private company on secondary markets like SharesPost and SecondMarket. It’s the first actively traded company to make that transition.
This morning SecondMarket, which usually doesn’t disclose much in the way of details of its business, published LinkedIn pricing dating back to April 2010. LinkedIn most recently traded for $35 on SecondMarket in March. It was one of the most actively traded companies on SecondMarket, accounting for 7 percent of transactions in the fourth quarter of 2010.
That looks teensy now! LinkedIn priced its IPO shares at $45 and now is selling for more than $100.
As I wrote last night, the most recently disclosed price for shares of LinkedIn on SharesPost was $30.79 earlier this year.
SecondMarket offered the following statement:

“This is very good news for LinkedIn and a much-needed boost for the IPO market. It’s great to see a company go public when it makes strategic sense for the business, and we’re pleased that trading on SecondMarket helped contribute to a successful IPO. This IPO also underscores the point that even for an exciting, innovative company like LinkedIn, it can take nearly a decade before the time is right to go public.”

And here are the prices:
April 2010 – $14.50/share
May 2010 – $17
June 2010 – $17
July 2010 – $21.50
August 2010 – $23
September 2010 – $25
October 2010 – $23
November 2010 – $25
December 2010 – $25
January 2011 – $34
February 2011 – $35
March 2011 – $35


Chi ha comprato in marzo e ha venduto il primo giorno di quotazione non ha realizzato un rendimento del 200% in un giorno ma può comunque consolarsi con un 100% al mese...
Tra i nuovi milionari infine si contano sicuramente molti dipendenti di Linkedin: secondo il Wall Street Journal
In February 2009, LinkedIn felt the need to re-price employee share options. Those with exercise prices above $2.32 a share were repriced to that level, with no modifications to the vesting schedule.
The social-media website's prospectus says "2,429,750 unexercised options originally granted to purchase common stock at prices ranging from $2.50 to 5.56 per share were repriced."
A U.S. fiscal stimulus and several rounds of quantitative easing later, LinkedIn shares closed on the first day of trading at $94.25.
The extraordinary shift in fortunes will no doubt keep LinkedIn talent from walking out the door, at least until their options vest. But, with the shares up so much, so fast, it hasn't left much on the table for new hires. Attracting the next generation of wannabe tech millionaires to LinkedIn may prove a harder sell.

Qui sotto potete vedere un video che commenta la prima giornata di contrattazioni di Linkedin!