On Monday, June 13th, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced that it has made a $26.2 billion deal to acquire LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD), a widely popular social platform. The acquisition is one of the largest tech acquisitions in history. Microsoft will pay $196 per share; LinkedIn's shares spiked in value after the announcement, nearing $193. Microsoft temporarily suspended trading in its own shares pending the deal, which is predicted to close by the end of the year. Both companies' boards approved the acquisition unanimously, though LinkedIn's shareholders and regulators still have a say on the matter. Jeff Weiner will remain as CEO of LinkedIn (which anticipates little to no changes regarding its own managers and employees, with the exception of those whose jobs center around the management of LinkedIn as a publicly traded company), and fall in behind Satva Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. "The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world's professionals," Nadella stated. "Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet."
While certainly profitable for LinkedIn (which can anticipate moving the business more rapidly), the deal is a strong move by Microsoft, which is seeking to expand into social platforms. LinkedIn is one of the most widely used business social platforms; its users range from first-time interns, to full-time employees, to CEO's. Prior to being bought by Microsoft, LinkedIn had in turn acquired Lynda.com (an education company) for $1.5 billion last year; the platform currently has over 400 million users. By acquiring LinkedIn, Microsoft can step in and manage one of the key social networking tools so essential to today's economy. Now that the software giant has to compete with rivals like Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Nadella is beginning to shift the business slightly away from Windows in favor of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. LinkedIn will contribute easily to this change in direction, as it already has an impressive team of algorithm-devising data scientists on board.
However, despite the many advantages to the deal, Microsoft is still taking a risk in acquiring LinkedIn. LinkedIn may have a large user base-but how much more can it feasibly grow? Microsoft is paying approximately $260 per monthly LinkedIn user. If Microsoft wants to keep its shareholders happy, it will have to either find a way to add users to LinkedIn's platform at a faster pace or announce how it plans to generate revenue from the platform's immense stores of data. And there is yet another risk: Microsoft has a poor history when it comes to big tech deals. Its acquisitions of Skype and aQuantive, for example, have yielded lukewarm results at best. While both deals were made before Nadella took the helm, history has a habit of repeating itself; presumably this is why Nadella is holding LinkedIn as an independent company, to avoid the pitfalls of integration. Thus the deal may yet go on to yield good results under Nadella's management.