LinkedIn to buy job site Bright for $120M
Bright specializes in using data science to match employers and job seekers more efficiently.
Professional social network LinkedIn said Thursday that it will purchase Bright, a 3-year-old service that connects job seekers with employers, for approximately $120 million in cash and stock.
Bright is said to be especially adept at using data to make its job matches, and LinkedIn plans to use the younger company's matching technology to improve its own recommendations. The service's existing members and customers, however, will only continue to have access to the Bright Web site through February 28.
"We decided to join LinkedIn because of what we lacked -- the ability to apply this technology across the entire economy," Bright founder Eduardo Vivas said wrote in a blog post.
LinkedIn said it expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter of this year. The $120 million price is broken down as 73 percent stock and 27 percent cash.
The news coincides with 10-year-old LinkedIn's fourth-quarter 2013 earnings report. The professional social network earned net income of $3.8 million on $447.2 million in total revenue for the quarter. Revenue was up 47 percent from the year-ago quarter. The company posted adjusted earnings per share of 39 cents, and said that it now has 277 million registered users.
Although the company bested Wall Street's estimates, LinkedIn's stock is trading down 8 percent on the after-hours market.