LinkedIn shares soared Thursday after the company reported both confident forward guidance and better-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue. The company said it saw adjusted

first-quarter earnings of 74 cents on $861 million in revenue. Analysts, meanwhile, had expected LinkedIn to report earnings of about 60 cents per share on $828 million in revenue, according

to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. Shares in the company spiked more than 15 percent in after-hours trading, but then gave back some of those gains. Wall Street had only expected

LinkedIn to report a 30 percent year-over-year increase in quarterly revenue and 5 percent growth in earnings per share over the previously reported figures from the year-ago period.

Subscriptions." Wall Street had expected those figures to come in at $539.8 million, $142.3 million and $142.4 million, respectively, according to StreetAccount. LinkedIn David Paul

Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images LinkedIn also topped estimates on members, reporting that it had 433 million members at the end of the first quarter — analysts had expected about 427.9

million. "LinkedIn delivered strong financial results and growth across our core product lines," Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO, said in the company's Thursday release. "As a

result of our new mobile experience, members are increasing their activity on LinkedIn, helping drive strong levels of engagement across the platform." On the company's Thursday

afternoon earnings call, Weiner said that LinkedIn "members are engaging at record levels with the more relevant and comprehensive feed." "During the quarter, viral actions

increased more than 80 percent, daily shares were up nearly 40 percent, and traffic to third-party publishers grew more than 150 percent," he added. Those results will come as welcome

news to investors who saw the digital networking company's stock crash when it reported its fourth-quarter results in February. Although it announced better-than-expected earnings and

revenue at the time, its shares plummeted on its outlook for the first quarter of 2016. With the company's stock falling more than 40 percent after that disclosure, LinkedIn saw about

$10 billion of its market capitalization disappear. Since that plunge to a share price of roughly $109, the stock has recovered to about $123. Looking to the second quarter, the company said

it expects revenue between $885 million and $890 million. Wall Street had on average expected that to be about $885.7 million, according to StreetAccount. Adjusted earnings for the current

quarter, meanwhile, are expected to range between 74 cents and 77 cents, the company guided — the consensus analyst estimate was only for 71 cents.