Macquarie Comments Aid LinkedIn Corp In Outperforming Broader Market

Shares of LinkedIn Corp LNKD have outperformed the broader market on Thursday, most likely due to beneficial comments from analysts at Macquarie. The firm's Tom White reiterated his Outperform rating and $258 price target.

LinkedIn has diversified its user base and has taken efforts to innovate with new products, according to White. He identified students and college grads as one of the fastest growing demographics using the network. Keeping with the desire for social data collections, White also noted LinkedIn is working on a project titled “Pinot,” which is going to be used for real-time corporate analytics.

Growth in the user engagement trends on LinkedIn should stabilize in the second half of 2014 and White thinks this should help to “drive modest acceleration in page view growth.”

Shares of LinkedIn were up 2.2 percent to $207.74.