LinkedIn beat Wall Street estimates for revenue and earnings in the December quarter, but lower-than-expected guidance for the upcoming quarter sent the stock down in after hours trading.
LinkedIn reported earnings per share of $0.39 on revenue of $447.2 million for the fourth quarter, coming in ahead of Wall Street estimates for earnings per share of $0.38 on revenue of $437.8 million.
However, the social network expects to generate between $455 million and $460 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2014, coming in below analyst estimates for revenue of $470 million. That sent the stock tumbling by as much as 12% in after hours trading to just below $200 a share.
LinkedIn had 277 million users by the end of the December quarter, up from 259 million the previous quarter.
As of publication, the stock had rebounded somewhat to about $207, a decline of 7% after hours.
UPDATE, Feb. 6, 2015, 5:52 p.m.: An earlier version of this story noted that LinkedIn had added twice as many users in the December quarter as Twitter. In fact, LinkedIn added 18 million "members," which does not necessarily translate to Twitter's metric of monthly active users. We regret the error.