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Prince Alwaleed Says Twitter Will Succeed Post IPO

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Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who’d invested $300 million in Twitter 2 years ago, says he thinks that the social media platform needs to focus on generating revenue. Twitter raised $1.82 billion during its November 7th IPO, and its stock jumped 73 percent after debuting, selling roughly 70 million shares to investors.

Alwaleed put his $300 million into Twitter in December of 2011, and has demonstrated that he’s bullish about how the unprofitable social network might generate income from its over 200 million users. “When we analyzed Twitter, we believed in its business model,” Alwaleed said, adding, “You bet on the company and that the monetization process is going to be successful. We’re seeing some success in that process.”

So far, Prince Alwaleed has made good use of Twitter, garnering over a million followers:

Al Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud is a member of the Saudi royal family, as well as the founder, CEO, and 95%-owner of the Kingdom Holding Company. In March 2013, Forbes Magazine listed Alwaleed as the 26th-richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $20 billion. Some have said that Alwaleed’s Twitter investment was an act of self-preservation, as the platform had been used to coordinate uprisings in his home region, and some noted the correlation between sudden censorship within the network, soon after getting a $300 million handshake from the Prince.

Twitter’s revenue reached $534.5 million during the 12 months before September 30, though user growth is slowing. The platform had 231.7 million monthly users in the quarter that ended in September, a 39 percent increase from the year before. Still, Twitter saw a growth of 65 percent during the year before that.

Image via Twitter.

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