It took a while, but it seems like the answer is now Yes.
It appears revenues went a bit sideways after the acquisiton — but then re-accelerated:
- LinkedIn revenue was $960m in Q3 of 2016, growing 23% Year-over-Year: LinkedIn Announces Third Quarter 2016 Results; and
- LinkedIn revenue was at $975m in quarterly revenues after the acquisition — or basically flat: LinkedIn brings in nearly $1 billion in revenue for Microsoft
- But then by fiscal Q3 (calendar Q2) of 2018, LinkedIn had “$1.3 billion of revenue this quarter. That’s a 37 percent increase from the same period last year”: Microsoft’s bets on Surface, gaming, and LinkedIn are starting to pay off
So they went to no growth (pretty bad in SaaS) in the quarter right after the acquisition to 37% annualized growth in less than 2 years (very, very impressive). 37% is a very high growth rate at $5b ARR and significantly faster than LinkedIn grew as a stand-alone company before (23%).
It looks like a bumpy integration that struggled at first, but came out strong on the other side.
