New York: LinkedIn's stock nearly doubled in its market debut because of huge investor demand for the first major US social networking company to go public.
The stock traded at $87.11, up 94 per cent, yesterday morning after debuting at $83 and briefly reaching $92.99.
Renaissance Capital, an initial public offering (IPO) research and investment firm, said LinkedIn's 84 per cent increase at the open was the biggest for a US IPO since the 2009 debut of OpenTable Inc., a restaurant reservations website.. Main Street investors clamoured for the job networking site's shares, which had only been available to the country's biggest mutual funds, pension funds and other major institutional investors in an initial public offering Wednesday evening.
LinkedIn Corp.'s IPO had been priced at $45 per share, at the high end of the company's initial target. The company had raised $353 million on Wednesday night in an IPO that valued it at $4.3 billion. That's the largest valuation for a US Internet company since Google went public in 2004.
Sweet said the "monstrous interest" in LinkedIn and its sharp climb were good signs for other social networking companies such as Twitter, Zynga, Groupon and networking giant Facebook.
