LinkedIn’s integration with Microsoft has “exceeded expectations,” propelling the business social network to record levels of engagement and revenue is growing in a way the company hasn’t seen since its 2011 IPO, CEO Jeff Weiner said in an interview with CNBC Thursday.
Microsoft closed the acquisition of LinkedIn, its largest buy ever at $26.2 billion in December 2016. Since then, the combined companies have been steadily rolling out integrations like adding LinkedIn data into Office 365 programs such as Outlook.
Despite being added into Microsoft’s Productivity and Business Processes segment for financial reporting purposes, LinkedIn continues to operate independently, Weiner said.
“LinkedIn continues to operate independently, but we are also able to leverage Microsoft’s huge footprint of roughly 1 billion customers on a global basis, their talent, their infrastructure, their advanced technology,” Weiner said. “So, so far so good.”
According to Microsoft’s most recent earnings report in February, LinkedIn contributed $1.3 billion in revenue to the overall bottom line, a nearly six-fold increase from the previous year’s revenue of $228 million. LinkedIn reported a $265 million operating loss in the most recent quarter, which is up from a year ago, but its losses have declined over the last three quarters.
