Dice this morning became the second job board in a week to see its stock price drop after reporting a profitable quarter and a year of growth.
Hours after the company reported it nearly doubled its fourth-quarter profit over the same quarter in 2010, meeting Wall Street’s expectations, its stock price took a 16 percent beating. In afternoon trading in New York, Dice Holdings was selling for $8.40 a share, down $1.59 on the day.
Last week Monster’s stock took a 20 percent hit after it missed analyst profit expectations and announced layoffs. The company earned 11 cents a share, rather than the 12 cents Wall Street expected. Yet, the company grew revenue for the year by about 14 percent and turned 2010′s loss into a 37 cents a share profit.
keep reading…
Facebook did today what everyone expected: It filed for an IPO.
In the paperwork submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it expects to raise $5 billion from the public sale of its stock. That’s based on the registration fee it paid. The New York Times says it could end up raising much more.
Facebook reported in its S-1 filing that it earned $1 billion on revenue of $3.7 billion, most of it coming from advertising. It reported having 845 million monthly active users as of the end of the year, a 39 percent increase over the year before. In the U.S., Facebook saw a 16 percent bump over 2010, ending last year with 161 million monthly average users, or about half the country’s total population.
Its average daily user count is 483 million, meaning more than half those who visit the site in a month do so every day. The company also reported 425 million monthly mobile users, a number it expects will grow with some of it replacing PC access. keep reading…
Monster is taking a battering on Wall Street today after the company missed the earnings expectations of the financial markets and warned it may just break even in the current quarter.
Monster’s stock price was down almost 20 percent at lunchtime in New York, a drop of $1.79 on the day. Trading below $10 for so long that Standard & Poors moved the company out of its S&P 500 stock basket in December, Monster’s price is now right at $7.19 a share.
The jobs advertising company, which yesterday laid off 400 employees, issued its fourth-quarter and full-year financials this morning before the markets opened. Despite growing revenue by almost 14 percent for the year, the company fell short in the final quarter. It earned 11 cents a share versus the 12 cents analysts were expecting. Monster’s revenue for the quarter also fell short, coming in at $250 million instead of the $259 million average estimate of Wall Street analysts. keep reading…
Ending what, for most, is a short week, we bring you the penultimate Friday roundup for 2011. Today’s collection includes mystery applicants, a police recruiting campaign gone bad, and Salesforce’s Rypple.
We start with a job seeker good deed from the Challenger people:
Free Job Hunting Advice By Phone
For two days next week, job seekers will be able to get career advice directly from professional counselors at no charge. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. CST on December 27 and 28, counselors will accept calls from job seekers nationwide, answering questions and offering advice about the job hunting process.
The number is 312-422-5010. Job hunters can get more information about the call-in at firm’s website and blog.
This is the 26th year that the global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas will offer this free call-in service .
Salesforce Acquires Rypple
Rypple, the company that brought a social, collaborative networking approach to performance management, is being acquired by Salesforce.com. The CRM company announced last week that it was buying Toronto-based Rypple for an undisclosed amount. keep reading…
With a stock price so low Monster is about to fall out of the S&P 500, there’s some very public speculation that the global employment advertising company could be bought by a private equity fund.
Rumors have periodically made the rounds of a potential or even pending sale — 20 of them since 2006, according to Bloomberg. All have proven false. But now, says the financial news service, financial analysts and some of Monster’s largest shareholders say the time and price may be right for a takeover.
“The valuation is absurdly cheap,” Eric Green, a Philadelphia-based fund manager at Penn Capital, told Bloomberg. With 3.2 million shares of Monster stock, Penn Capital is one of the company’s largest shareholders.
“The stock has been a clear disappointment,” Green is quoted as saying. He suggested a takeover price of $15 a share. That’s a 92 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price of $7.83. “I would love to see someone buy it,” he said.
Monster’s stock price has declined steadily since hitting a 10-year high of $59.28 in May, 2006. In the last 12 months, the stock has been as high as $25.90, reaching there in January, when the economy seemed ready for a hiring surge. Since August, it has been under $10 a share.
The market value of the company is now about $1 billion, $5 billion less than it was worth in 2006. Its 66 percent decline since the start of this year is the largest of any company included in the S&P 500. As a result, Monster is being moved by Standard & Poors to its MidCap 400 after the market closes today. keep reading…
Most of you are no strangers to slashed budgets over the past few years. Yet just because budgets are reduced doesn’t mean your workload is. So how do you maintain quality of hire without the budget for your preferred tools and technology? Pacific Northwest National Laboratory did just that, by developing a carefully planned strategy and thinking outside the box. Join us as Rob Dromgoole explains how they make big hires on a small budget.
For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!
The OnRec and Kennedy conferences, operated jointly as “The Recruiting Conference,” which just ended today in Chicago, have been acquired by an investment group led by two brothers who previously owned Kennedy Information.
Greenhaven Partners bought the annual conference and RecruitingTrends.com, the online successor to the venerable Kennedy Information print newsletter of the same name. The price was not disclosed. The conference and the website were owned by Tarsus Group, a publicly held U.K.-based international business-to-business media and conference firm. Tarsus bought OnRec several years ago, just as it was beginning to hold its first North American conference. OnRec was founded in the United Kingdom, and has a strong presence there with its website, print magazine, and conferences. OnRec’s UK assets were not part of the sale. keep reading…
LinkedIn lost money, but still beat analyst estimates, blowing through the most optimistic projections by millions and ending the quarter with $139.5 million in revenue. The company also announced it would sell $100 million more of its shares to finance its aggressive expansion.
The company told investors and analysts during a conference call after the markets closed this afternoon that it would add some 500 to 600 more employees by the end of the year. CEO Jeff Weiner said the rapid expansion would give LinkedIn a jump on 2012. keep reading…
Strong demand for IT and finance helped propel job board operator Dice Holdings to a 36 percent increase in revenue and a 51 percent jump in earnings.
The company this morning reported earning $9.3 million on revenue of $46.8 million in the 3rd quarter, yielding per share earning of 13 cents. Last year for the same quarter the company earned 9 cents per share.
The company said growth was driven by its flagship site, Dice.com, which saw an 18 percent increase in its recruitment-package customers whose average monthly spend grew by 12 percent. The eFinancialCareers operations also saw strong growth with a 29 percent increase over the same quarter last year.
Overall, the numbers were in line with analysts’ expectations. Revenue, in fact, slightly exceeded the estimates.
However, company officials estimated revenue for the current 4th quarter would come in at $47.5 million, $1 million below what Wall Street was projecting. The guidance pushed Dice’s stock to a low of $8.50 after opening at $9.50.
Dice CEO Scot Melland said, “Recruitment activity did improve in September after a seasonally slower summer; however, the magnitude was less than what we traditionally experience. As expected, recruitment activity slowed in financial services and economic uncertainty is impacting the urgency some companies place on recruiting.’
His comments echoed those of Monster Worldwide executives who noted an apparent slowdown in hiring activity beginning in September. Monster officials said the slowdown appeared to be extending into October.
The stock markets rallied today on news of a European bailout deal, but Monster didn’t make the party.
The company’s shares got no lift from the overall market even though earnings are up, because the employment picture in the months ahead is murky. keep reading…
From the giant IPO-bound staffing firm Staffmark Holdings, to Indianapolis’ 14-person HR services firm FlashPoint, 156 self-described human resource companies made the annual Inc. list of the 5,000 fastest growing businesses in the U.S.
Inc. ranks the companies, all privately held, by growth rate; the faster revenue increased over three years, the higher the company ranks. By that measure, HR staffing and services firm Nextaff was first among the HR companies that volunteered to participate. (Participation requires companies to divulge annual revenue, employee counts and growth, etc. Only some companies are willing to publicize that kind of proprietary information.)
keep reading…
Wall Street may have tanked. The global markets may be in a shambles. But LinkedIn is proving you can roll uphill.
Fresh off its May IPO, the company surprised almost everyone, reporting it more than doubled revenue in the second quarter and turned a 7 cent a diluted share profit. After hours, investors rewarded the company’s performance, bidding up its stock price by almost 10 percent in the minutes after the numbers were released.
Analysts had predicted the company would lose 3 cents a share on revenue of $104.73 million. Looking ahead to the third quarter, the consensus was for a 4 cent a share loss on revenue of $111.82 million.
Now LinkedIn estimates it will bring in between $121 million and $125 million.
Since the initial euphoria, LinkedIn’s after-hours trading is lower, but still up over its New York close of $95.52. The stock lost $10.13 during Wednesday’s bloodbath. At early evening in New York, the stock is trading at $99.00 a share.
Company CEO Jeff Weiner, speaking at the company’s first financial results conference call, reported that on every metric LinkedIn’s second quarter performance showed growth. Besides the dollars and cents, Weiner said LinkedIn is growing at the rate of 2 members every second and now has 121 million members. Engagement with the site also continues to grow; pageviews are up 80 percent over the same quarter last year and unique visitors now average 81.8 million monthly.
“Talent is the driving force,” Weiner said, both on the site and in the company itself. keep reading…
On a day when new unemployment claims fall below 400,000 for the first time since April, and Monster reports its strongest quarter since 2008, what happens? The company’s stock opens down and only goes lower.
If this was one of those no-future-for-job boards things, then we might expect to see Wall Street discounting all the publicly held recruitment publishers. But Dice Holdings, which reported its strong quarter Tuesday morning, is up. And the Chinese careers company, 51Job, which has annual revenue that’s less than Monster’s quarterly take, is trading at $64.82, down .2 percent.
Not two hours after the company ended its quarterly financial conference call with analysts, Monster’s stock is selling at $12.06 a share. That’s an 8 percent drop from Wednesday’s $13.14 close.
It doesn’t seem to make sense considering Monster earned 9 cents a share, a penny more than what analysts were expecting. It reported 2nd quarter revenue of $269.7 million, well above expectations and even a bit more than the company’s own best prediction.
Its international business grew 31 percent over the 2nd quarter last year and now rivals its North American revenue, which increased by a not-too-shabby 26 percent to $122.6 million.
With those kinds of numbers, and predictions of a strong 3rd quarter, Monster Chairman, President and CEO Sal Iannuzzi was hardly boasting when he opened his presentation this morning, saying, “We are pleased with our financial performance.” keep reading…
Job board operator Dice Holdings turned in a financial performance in the 2nd quarter that was in line with Wall Street’s expectations.
Reporting this morning before the U.S. markets opened, Dice reported it earned 11 cents a share on revenue of $44.9 million. Dice beat the Street’s high-end revenue prediction by almost $1 million. Revenue was 50 percent higher than in the 2nd quarter last year, due in part to acquisitions last year, as well as a 48 percent increase from eFinancialCareers, especially in the U.K.
For the current quarter, the company said it expected to earn 13 cents a share, which is what analysts were expecting to hear. keep reading…
The two largest, publicly held job boards are scheduled to report their 2nd quarter financials this week, and there are indications that the news will be good.
Tuesday morning, Dice Holdings releases its financials. Two days later, on Thursday, Monster reports. LinkedIn, which may or may not be a job board depending on your point of view, reports on August 4.
Privately held CareerBuilder released some limited numbers last week. One of the two largest career sites in the world, it reported $160 million in revenue from its North American operations. That represents a 15.1 percent increase over the same quarter in 2010, and a 6.67 percent increase over the first quarter of this year. keep reading…
Two weeks ago, Taleo CEO Michael Gregoire was telling The Street he saw growth ahead for his HR technology company.
“We are slowly growing our European operations,” Gregoire told The Street’s market analyst Debra Borchardt.
He must have had his tongue firmly in cheek as he said that, since today Taleo doubled its European operations with the acquisition of HR technology vendor Jobpartners for $38 million. keep reading…
Monster got a boost Friday when investment bank UBS upgraded the company’s stock to a buy.
In its recommendation, UBS said the job board’s North American division will continue to be challenged, but it is more optimistic about its growing international business and the potential revenue boost from the introduction of its 6 Sense search technology overseas.
The 44 percent drop in Monster’s stock price UBS considers overdone; its 52-week high hit $25.90; today’s price is right around $13.50. However, while recruitment budgets are generally stable, UBS says the North American business, which comes largely from the U.S., has plenty of competition from niche sites.
As if to prove the point, Monster recently launched a recruiting site for expatriate Indians featuring jobs in the homeland. The flashy ReturntoHome channel, part of Monster’s India job board, has a prominent Flash presentation promoting India as “the land of opportunities.” Besides noting the country is now the 4th-largest economy in the world, it enthuses “your family will surely enjoy the same lifestyle in India.” keep reading…
Wall Street investors who spent the day bidding up LinkedIn faster than the last seconds of a hot eBay auction have given the company a $9 billion value as of the end of the trading day in New York.
Not bad for a job board business network that saw its first profit last year.
The stock, which was priced in its first filings with the Security and Exchange Commission at $32-$35, soared to $122.70, before settling back to close the day at $94.25 a share.
Trading as LNKD, the stock was the darling of Wall Street. More than 27 million shares will have changed hands by the time the market closes, several times the 7.84 million share that were part of the initial public offering. More than 200 stories have appeared in the financial trades and online since the stock opened this morning.
The Wall Street Journal wrote an entertaining post pointing out that at LinkedIn’s price at one point, Apple would be worth $3 trillion. It shows, says the Journal, “how bananas the LinkedIn IPO is.” keep reading…
Next week, when LinkedIn is likely to begin offering its stock for sale, the 8-year-old company could find itself worth $3.3 billion.
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a total of 7.84 million shares will be offered to the public at a price estimated to be somewhere between $32 and $35 a share. Of the total, LinkedIn will sell 4,827,804 shares, while existing stockholders, the venture capital investors, will sell the balance.
At the upper end of the price estimate, LinkedIn would be worth more than half again as much as Monster. (Stock held by the founders, other early investors, and executives, totals 89,547,185 and is factored in the total company valuation.) Monster’s market cap today is $2.04 billion.
Now why compare to Monster? Because increasingly LinkedIn is emerging as a social networking job board. keep reading…
Double-digit revenue increases are being reported by the leading U.S. job boards. Dice and Monster, both publicly held, reported their first quarter financial results today.
Dice Holdings brought in $40.1 million, which was 49 percent over revenue during the same period last year. The biggest portion came from its tech board, Dice.com, which saw a 35 percent year-over-year increase. Its eFinancialCareers site grew even more aggressively. Revenue there was up 48 percent, the company reported this morning.
Monster reported its overall revenue was $261.4 million, a 21 percent improvement over the same quarter in 2010. That number includes an adjustment relating to the acquisition of HotJobs. Excluding the one-time charges, Monster’s revenue was $264 million and it earned 5 cents a share, beating the 3 cents per share average of analysts’ estimates.
Dice, too, beat Wall Street, reporting 9 cents a share, versus analysts’ 8 cents per share expectations. The Street expected total revenue to come in at $39.4 million, which Dice also beat.
Monster’s big tell on hiring trends is the 24 percent year-over-year increase in bookings. The $272.5 million is the value of job posting and resume contracts signed during the quarter. It’s a strong sign of continuing improvement in the worldwide economy, and solid evidence that companies expect to continue to increase their hiring. keep reading…
Dice this morning became the second job board in a week to see its stock price drop after reporting a profitable quarter and a year of growth.
