科技英语新闻：LinkedIn IPO priced at $45 a share

BEIJING, May 19 (Xinhuanet) -- LinkedIn said Wednesday that its stock will debut at 45 U.S. dollars per share, a higher price than the company was expecting even earlier this week, media reports said.

The first major U.S. social networking firm to go public, LinkedIn jacked up its initial public offering (IPO) share price for 7.84 million shares to 45 dollars just a week after it first set a target of 32-35 dollars per share.

It minted LinkedIn with a market value of more than 4 billion dollars, the highest for a U.S. Internet company taking its first bow on Wall Street since Google Inc. went public nearly seven years ago.

The sale could bring in more than 354 million dollars. The company's shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the symbol "LNKD".

LinkedIn has more than 100 million members in over 200 countries and territories. In 2010, the company made 15 million dollars in profit on 243 million dollars in revenue, according to its SEC filing.

LinkedIn's biggest shareholder is its founder and chairman, Reid Hoffman, who owns more than 21 percent of the company.