LinkedIn Q1 Beats Street On Sales Of $638M, EPS Of $0.57

After Facebook and Twitter reported mixed results this week, LinkedIn today was the latest of the social networks to report its Q1 earnings. It posted sales of $638 million,  up 35% year on year, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.57, beating analyst expectations.

Analysts had been expecting adjusted earnings per share of $0.56 per share, on revenues of $636.5 million. LinkedIn has actually beaten earnings expectations in every quarter since it went public in May, 2011, and analysts were again bullish going into today’s report. Still, perhaps because of the overall pounding that stocks for other social companies like Twitter are facing, LinkedIn’s shares were trading down a couple of percentage points as market close approached today.

LinkedIn also beat its own guidance of  $618-622 million in revenues and non-GAAP EPS of $0.53.

LinkedIn’s big news of the last several months was its acquisition of Lynda.com for $1.5 billion, spearheading the company’s move into a whole new business category, online learning. The transaction is expected to close some time in the current quarter, and LinkedIn may talk a bit more about its plans in today’s call. (We’ll update as and when they do.)

Forging a new business in online education makes a lot of sense for LinkedIn, as it builds on its existing community of users who come to the site to network with other professionals, and look for jobs. LinkedIn continues to monetize in both of those areas — by way of paid job listings and searches; paid premium accounts for better access; and advertising — but online learning will help the company develop another reason for people to visit, stay and pay to be on LinkedIn.

Other recent big moves include the launch of a new product, Elevate, a paid tool for employees to share links to stories across social media networks (think: Hootsuite); the acquisition of Refresh.io to add more predictive analytics and social insights to its mobile app and other services; and the purchase of Careerify to enhance its online recruitment tools.

As a point of comparison, last quarter LinkedIn reported $643 million in revenues and EPS of

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