Microsoft released its financials for the quarter ended 31 March 2022 last week. Its social media offering, LinkedIn, was again a superstar, with revenue increasing 34% against the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year.
In comparison, revenue for Productivity and Business Processes increased 17%, with Office Commercial increasing 12%, Office Consumer increasing 11%, and Dynamic Products and Cloud Services increasing 22%.
According to Microsoft, “LinkedIn revenue grew 34% … driven by a strong job market in our Talent Solutions business and strong advertising demand in our Marketing Solutions business”.
This is a continuation of the very strong year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth shown per quarter in the Productivity and Business Processes table below (2021Q3 to 2022Q3). Microsoft reports that the 17% revenue growth of Productivity and Business Processes was driven by Office 365 and LinkedIn. Operating expenses grew 13%, driven by investments in cloud engineering and LinkedIn.
LinkedIn sessions also showed record engagement, with 22% growth. According to Microsoft, the record engagement showed that “830 million professionals used the platform to connect, learn, grow, and get hired. Amid the Great Reshuffle, we’re seeing a skills-first labor market emerge. The number of companies using skills filters on LinkedIn to fill open roles has doubled year-over-year”. It also reports that:
- Hires increased 88%.
- Its Talent Solutions revenue increased 43%, for the sixth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth.
- 28 million members now subscribe to at least one newsletter on LinkedIn – up 51% on the past quarter.
Meanwhile, the number of LinkedIn users worldwide has grown to over 800 million and this figure is projected to grow to over 1 billion users in the next three years, as per the Statista forecast. Age distribution is currently heavily skewed in the 25-34 age group (59.1%), with a much small percentage of users in the 18-24 (20.4%) and 35-54 (17.1%) groups. Only 2.9% of users are in the 55+ age group. (This is as per the Statista data.)
LinkedIn actively helps users to use the platform effectively, with regular guides, case studies and insight being published, such as the Founder’s Guide to LinkedIn that it published two weeks ago.
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(Source: All data was extracted from Microsoft (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2022-q3/press-release-webcast; https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2022-q3/productivity-and-business-processes-performance; https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/investor/earnings/fy-2022-q3/metrics; https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/SlidesFY22Q3.pptx?version=96df00a5-3875-6477-a693-4e5784b0f929; https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/PressReleaseFY22_Q3.docx?version=2b747fd0-974e-2aac-d890-017ee8b34de9; https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/TranscriptFY22Q3.docx?version=52d815b6-1a9f-0c49-d0ab-5cd077ae469d), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/research-and-insights/break-through-to-revenue-with-the-founders-guide-to-linkedin) and Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/273505/global-linkedin-age-group/ and https://www.statista.com/forecasts/1147197/linkedin-users-in-the-world).
