WebProNews

Tag: twitter ipo

  • Twitter Announces Date For First Earnings Release

    Twitter has announced a date for its first official financial results release as a public company, and a time for the corresponding conference call. This will mark the beginning of a new quarterly saga for the company in answering to investors and the media about its financial performance.

    Twitter’s Q4 and fiscal year 2013 results will be released in less than a month on February 5th after market close. The call will take place at 2PM Pacific.

    Twitter will be accepting questions submitted via Twitter, directed to @TwitterIR, using the hashtag #TWTRearnings. Questions will be considered for the Q&A portion of the call, in addition to those submitted by people on the call.

    There will be a live webcast of the call with supplemental slides looking at the results, which you’ll be able to find on Twitter’s Investor Relations site.

    The world got its first look at Twitter’s financials when it filed to go public in September. The IPO came in November, and in February, we’ll get a good look at how the company has fared in its first publicly traded months.

    There has certainly been a focus on monetization with Twitter launching all kinds of advertising enhancements over the past year.

    Image via Dick Costolo (Twitter)

  • Twitter Stock Makes Co-Founder Jack Dorsey a Billionaire

    Everyone knew that there was a lot of money to be made when Twitter went public, but what Twitter opened at on the New York Stock Exchange far exceeded the company’s expectations.

    So what does this mean for Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and others? Cha-ching! Thanks to Twitter, Dorsey has now been elevated to billionaire status.

    Dorsey, a St. Louis, Missouri native, was expected to make some big bucks after it was speculated that Twitter would start trading at $26 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Instead, Twitter (TWTR) opened at $45.10. Twitter was worth around $18 million before going public. The current trading price makes the company worth right at $32 billion and makes its stockholders a whole lot richer than originally anticipated.

    Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is now a billionaire thanks to his Twitter stock alone. If Dorsey were to dump his 23,411,350 shares right now at $45.81 per share, he would make around $1.07 billion. It has been estimated that around 70 million shares will be sold in the IPO. Check out Dorsey’s tweet below after the Twitter IPO ship set sail–he certainly has a few darn good reasons for his enthusiasm!

    Dorsey is also the CEO and founder of Square, a company that accepts mobile credit card payments. Technically, Dorsey was already worth a billion before today if you count what his Square stock would have sold for on the secondary market. But, that’s a lot less exciting than “Man Becomes a Billionaire In One Day!”

    Considering how quickly Square is growing, there is some speculation that Dorsey will make that company public in 2014, which could very well make him a billionaire a second time over.

    [Images via Google and Twitter]

  • Twitter Opens At $45.10, Up 73.5%

    Twitter got off to a pretty big start as a public company, opening up at $45.10 (73.5% higher than its set price of $26). That price values Twitter just shy of $32 billion.

    Also, Patrick Stewart helped ring the opening bell.

    As of the time of this writing, TWTR is trading at $45.85.

    Twtitter Stock

    So yeah, a pretty good start for a company not expected to be profitable until 2015.

    Image: Google

  • Patrick Stewart Is Hanging Out With Twitter At The IPO

    You might be interested to know that Sir Patrick Stewart is present at the NYSE for the Twitter IPO.

    Twitter enlisted Stewart, nine-year-old lemonade stand owner Vivienne Harr and a representative from the Boston Police Department for the opening bell ringing.

    Here’s Steart posing with all your favorite Twitter guys and the other aforementioned bell-ringers.

    Business Insider, reporting from the floor, has a couple more pics of Stewart.

    With tweets like these, it’s easy to see why Twitter would want Stewart on hand:

    It’s stuff like this that justifies the price, no? Actually, these pics are all available on his Facebook page too (don’t tell Dick Costolo and the guys).

  • Twitter IPO: 7 Things You Might Not Know

    Twitter will go public on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday morning. On the eve of the company’s much talked about IPO, here are seven things you might now know:

    1. If Twitter’s stock skyrockets tomorrow, it’s actually a bad thing for the company.

    According to San Francisco investment banker Bill Hambrecht, who has helped companies like Amazon, Apple and Google go public, if Twitter’s price per share rises significantly higher than its IPO price of $26 on opening day, that money’s going into the pockets of Wall Street insiders instead of flowing back into the company.

    2. There’s a reason we’re talking about MAUs.

    An MAU is a monthly active user. This number is important because many Twitter users aren’t actually active on the platform. Only about half of registered users follow two or more people. Investors want to know how many people are actually using the network, not how many are merely signed up, because of the obvious implications this has for income generation.

    3. Speaking of MAUs, Twitter is lagging behind some of its competitors.

    Facebook boasts an impressive 1.19 billion MAUs while Twitter reports just 215 million. It also lags behind Google+, which reports 300 million.

    4. Most of Twitter’s MAUs are outside the United States.

    An estimated 3/4 MAUs are outside the US, and experts caution that this could have negative implications when it comes to monetization.

    5. Some San Franciscans don’t like Twitter, and they plan to let the world know.

    A group of individuals and community-based organizations will stage a protest on Thursday, set to begin at 6:30 a.m., right when Twitter’s shares start trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They claim that the company receives unfair tax breaks, and is driving up rent in the Tenderloin and Mid-Market neighborhoods.

    In a twist of irony, the protest has been promoted on Twitter, under the hashtag #ThrownOutByTwitter.

    6. Twitter is doing its IPO a little differently than Facebook did.

    Besides being generally more low-key about it, Twitter is listing its stock on the New York Stock Exchange, while Facebook listed on the more tech-driven NASDAQ Stock Market.

    The lead banker for Twitter’s IPO is Goldman Sachs Group Inc, while Facebook went with Morgan Stanley.

    7. When it comes to privacy concerns, Twitter could potentially know more about its users than any of the other social networks.

    When you’re reading an article on a website or blog, you usually have the option to tweet it or like it on Facebook. While Facebook claims it doesn’t use its like buttons for tracking, Twitter makes no such promises.

    Furthermore, Twitter recently acquired MoPub, a start-up that will place ads within its mobile app. The combined information collecting abilities of Twitter and MoPub have the potential to create what some tech experts are calling a “digital Rosetta Stone that enables it to know who you are, wherever you are.”

    Image: Twitter (SEC)

  • Twitter IPO Flies High At $26 Per Share

    Twitter IPO Flies High At $26 Per Share

    Twitter’s stock price has now been priced at $26 and will start trading from Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “TWTR”. The company is now valued at $18 billion, and it is expected that the IPO will raise about $1.8 billion to fund future expansion and About 70 million shares will be sold.

    Earlier in the week, its IPO price had ranged between $23 and $25, but some analysts now say that the price may leap to as much as $50 once the trading starts, and it is widely expected that this IPO might be the second largest after Google’s 2004 that raised about $1.92 billion.

    Twitter has been trying to avoid the trouble that marred Facebook’s IPO where its IPO offering was tarnished by a $10 million fine imposed by Nasdaq as a result of technical glitches and its Wall Street underwriters are doing everything they can to ensure that the process is a smoother one.

    Barclays Capital will be the company’s designated market maker. The Role of the designated market maker is to allow human beings to trade stock, unlike what happens with all-electronics stock exchanges like Nasqaq.

    It is interesting to note that Twitter has not made any profit since 2006; therefore, it goes public a much smaller company compared to others like Facebook, Google, and Linkedln. However, there is no doubting the fact that Twitter holds an important share in social media.

    Perhaps Twitter has chosen to go public at the time when it’s registering massive growth in its users. It should be remembered that Twitter’s active users rose by 25% in its first 9 months compared to 45% growth in the same period last year.

    By the time Twitter goes public, Twitter Co-founder Evan Williams will own about 10.4% of the company’s share. The largest shareholder is Rizvi Traverse, who holds about 16% stake valued at $2.2 Billion. Others with a considerable stake in the company include Jack Dorsey ($609 Million), Peter Fenton ($820 Million) and CEO Dick Costolo (199 Million).

    (image via twitter.com)

  • Twitter IPO: $26 Per Share

    Twitter just announced via tweet that the price per share of its initial public offering has been set at $26, with an $18 billion valuation. The shares, which have been priced above a previous range of $23 and $25, will be available on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday morning.

    Twitter ipo

    The $26 IPO was debated by Twitter’s board of executives and underwriters until Wednesday afternoon, and is indicative of a high demand for the microblogging service’s stocks. Twitter raised $1.8 billion in the offering, selling 70 million shares.

    Recently, Twitter had increased its IPO price range, which had the stock potentially sitting between the aforementioned $23 and $25. This came after an earlier estimate of shares possibly going for between $17 and $20.

    Twitter said in its filing:

    Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for the common stock. It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price per share will be between $23.00 and $25.00. Our common stock has been approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TWTR”.

    We are an “emerging growth company” as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings.

    Twitter users took to the platform, mostly concerned with the use of a low-resolution image to explain the IPO, which exceeded Twitter’s 140 character limit:

    Interestingly, grey market analysts have predicted that Twitter stock will be at $43.60 per share, by the end of Thursday.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons.

  • Twitter IPO: Grey Market Investors Expect Twitter Shares To Be $43.60 At The End Of Day One

    Twitter is expected to announce its final price per share for its IPO this evening, with trading beginning on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

    The company already bumped up its price range in an amendment to its SEC filing this week, going from between $17 and $20 to between $23 and $25.

    As it did ahead of the Facebook IPO, IG set up a grey market when Twitter filed its S-1. This allows its clients to take a view on what the market cap of Twitter will be after the first official day of trading, but actually trade it with IG.

    “This gives a good indication where investors think Twitter should be valued and provides IGs analysts with unique insights ahead of the IPO,” a spokesperson tells WebProNews.

    “The current mid-price of $23.75 billion on IGs Twitter grey market indicates investors expect to see a share price of $43.60 at the end of day one,” the spokesperson says. “This is down sharply from nearly three weeks ago, when the expected market cap hit $33 billion, equal to more than $60 a share. The grey market has since leveled off which usually indicates investors believe it has reached a fair value. The same ran true for the UK Royal Mail grey market which indicated investors thought the stock was heavily undervalued.”

    IG technical analyst Brenda Kelly says, “This is the largest Silicon Valley IPO since Facebook and underwriters of the floatation will be keen to make this more of a success in comparison. The good news is that extensive hype in advance of the Facebook IPO – blamed to an extent for its less-than-impressive debut on the stock market – has been avoided. The decision to list on the NYSE was also clearly inspired by the disastrous delay in Facebook trading, due to a glitch in the NASDAQ computer. Twitter has announced a range of $23 and $25 for its stock price, which would value the company at $17.4bn.”

    “It must be remembered that Facebook was, and is, a much bigger company — it had 900 million users when it went public, and has more than a billion today — and its size was one of its big selling points,” she says. “Also unlike Facebook, Twitter has yet to turn a profit. The company reported a net loss of $79.4 million on revenue of only $316.9 million in 2012. Given its active user base the company does have great profit-making potential, but monetising this potential is a different story – something that early investors in Facebook learned the hard way.”

    “An unsuccessful IPO is something that underwriters of the flotation will be keen to avoid,” adds Kelly. “The extensive hype in advance of the Facebook IPO – blamed to an extent for its less-than-impressive debut on the stock market – has been avoided. The decision to list on the NYSE was also clearly inspired by the disastrous delay in Facebook trading, due to a glitch in the NASDAQ computer.”

    Twitter is selling 70,000,000 shares.

    Image: Twitter (SEC)

  • Twitter Bumps Up IPO Price Range

    Twitter has made yet another revision to its IPO filing with the SEC, this time raising the price. Now, the company is looking to price shares at between $23 and $25. That’s up from between $17 and $20.

    The company says in the filing:

    Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for the common stock. It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price per share will be between $23.00 and $25.00. Our common stock has been approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TWTR”.

    We are an “emerging growth company” as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings.

    Twitter is selling 70,000,000 shares. With the new price range, we’re talking about somewhere around $1.7 billion, giving Twitter a $13 billion market cap.

    Twitter is expected to launch the IPO on November 7th.

    [via Forbes]

    Image: Twitter (SEC)

  • Twitter IPO Will Price 70 Million Shares At $17 – $20

    Twitter filed an amendment to its Form S-1 registration statement with the SEC today revealing that it will offer 70 million shares at a price range of $17-$20.

    Twitter says in the document:

    Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for the common stock. It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price per share will be between $17.00 and $20.00. Our common stock has been approved for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TWTR”.

    We are an “emerging growth company” as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings.

    Last week it was revealed that Twitter would officially be trading as TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange.

    The exact date of the IPO is yet to be determined, but ti is expected in November, maybe even as early as the 4th, according to some reports.

    Earlier this week, Twitter secured a $1 billion line of credit.

    Image: Twitter (SEC)

  • Twitter Will Officially Trade As ‘TWTR’ On NYSE

    Well, it’s official. Twitter will be traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “TWTR”.

    Twitter expressed its intent to list under TWTR, but on Tuesday, the company filed new SEC documentation affirming it.

    Twitter says in the filing:

    Oxley Act, and the listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange. We expect that the requirements of these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time consuming and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems and resources.

    The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls and other procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we will file with the SEC is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms, and that information required to be disclosed in reports under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our principal executive and financial officers. We are also continuing to improve our internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources, including accounting-related costs and significant management oversight.

    Our current controls and any new controls that we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business. Further, weaknesses in our disclosure controls or our internal control over financial reporting may be discovered in the future. Any failure to develop or maintain effective controls, or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement, could harm our operating results or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods. Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting also could adversely affect the results of management evaluations and independent registered public accounting firm audits of our internal control over financial reporting that we will eventually be required to include in our periodic reports that will be filed with the SEC. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial and other information, which would likely have a negative effect on the trading price of our common stock. In addition, if we are unable to continue to meet these requirements, we may not be able to remain listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

    In a different section, Twitter says:

    We intend to apply for the listing of our common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “TWTR”. However, we cannot assure you that an active trading market for our common stock will develop on that exchange or elsewhere or, if developed, that any market will be sustained. Accordingly, we cannot assure you of the likelihood that an active trading market for our common stock will develop or be maintained, the liquidity of any trading market, your ability to sell your shares of our common stock when desired or the prices that you may obtain for your shares.

    After Twitter first revealed its intent to list under TWTR, some were confused by the ticker symbol of bankrupt Tweeter Home Entertainment, which saw it stock soar suddenly.

    Image: Twitter

  • In Preparation For IPO, Twitter Reveals What Could Kill Its Business

    As previously reported, Twitter filed for a $1 billion IPO, making the SEC documentation publicly available, and for the first time, we get to see what the company’s revenues look like. We also get to see the company assess its risk factors, which is always an interesting part of these filings.

    Twitter notes in the filing that investing in its stock carries a high degree of risk.

    “If we fail to grow our user base, or if user engagement or ad engagement on our platform decline, our revenue, business and operating results may be harmed,” it says. “The size of our user base and our users’ level of engagement are critical to our success. We had 218.3 million average MAUs in the three months ended June 30, 2013, which was a 44% increase from 151.4 million average MAUs in the three months ended June 30, 2012. Our financial performance has been and will continue to be significantly determined by our success in growing the number of users and increasing their overall level of engagement on our platform as well as the number of ad engagements.”

    “We anticipate that our user growth rate will slow over time as the size of our user base increases,” the company continues. “For example, in general, a higher proportion of Internet users in the United States uses Twitter than Internet users in other countries and, in the future, we expect our user growth rate in certain international markets, such as Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, to continue to be higher than our user growth rate in the United States. To the extent our user growth rate slows, our success will become increasingly dependent on our ability to increase levels of user engagement and ad engagement on Twitter.”

    “We generate a substantial majority of our revenue based upon engagement by our users with the ads that we display,” it adds. “If people do not perceive our products and services to be useful, reliable and trustworthy, we may not be able to attract users or increase the frequency of their engagement with our platform and the ads that we display. A number of consumer-oriented websites that achieved early popularity have since seen their user bases or levels of engagement decline, in some cases precipitously. There is no guarantee that we will not experience a similar erosion of our user base or engagement levels.”

    Here are the exact risk factors Twitter lists for what could potentially negatively affect user growth and engagement:

    • users engage with other products, services or activities as an alternative to ours;
    • influential users, such as world leaders, government officials, celebrities, athletes, journalists, sports teams, media outlets and brands or certain age demographics conclude that an alternative product or service is more relevant;
    • we are unable to convince potential new users of the value and usefulness of our products and services;
    • there is a decrease in the perceived quality of the content generated by our users;
    • we fail to introduce new and improved products or services or if we introduce new products or services that are not favorably received;
    • technical or other problems prevent us from delivering our products or services in a rapid and reliable manner or otherwise affect the user experience;
    • we are unable to present users with content that is interesting, useful and relevant to them;
    • users believe that their experience is diminished as a result of the decisions we make with respect to the frequency, relevance and prominence of ads that we display;
    • there are user concerns related to privacy and communication, safety, security or other factors;

    So, basically the same risks all of its peers face. Luckily for Twitter, Facebook’s new hashtags haven’t drawn very much interest, and we’re still not hearing often that major news events are breaking on Google+.

    Facebook does have a new focus on public conversations these days, however, and that is obviously where Twitter shines. Still, the two companies have managed to flourish alongside each other for years now, and there’s no indication that this will change anytime in the foreseeable future.

    Twitter intends to list its common stock under the symbol TWTR. The company is offering 472,613,753 shares.

    You can read the SEC filing in its entirety here.

    Image: Facebook

  • With Twitter IPO Pending, User Growth Comes Into Question

    Now that Twitter has announced its filing for a planned IPO, we can all expect the scrutiny knob to be cranked up to the max. This is no doubt why Twitter has gone the confidential route, but that doesn’t mean analysts and the blogosphere at large won’t pick apart every aspect of the company possible from the inside out.

    A day after the announcement, the company’s growth rate has already come into question.

    Twitter announced that it hit 200 million monthly active users in December.

    A far cry from Facebook’s over a billion, but nothing to shake a stick at. However, there might be some unrealistic expectations for the company’s immediate future from within the company. All Things D is reports:

    A few months later, CEO Dick Costolo told employees he expected to get to 400 million users by the end of 2013, according to people familiar with the company. Sources say that Twitter now has around 240 million users, which means it has been adding fewer than 4.5 million users a month in 2013. If it continued to grow at that rate, it would end this year around the 260 million mark — meaning that its user base would have grown by about 30 percent, instead of Costolo’s 100 percent goal.

    Frankly, it’s hard to see how Twitter would double its users that quickly when it took so long to get to the 200 million mark in the first place. It certainly doesn’t seem to be losing any popularity, but that’s a pretty big goal to live up to.

    Image: Dick Costolo (Twitter)

  • Twitter Files For IPO, But We Won’t See It Yet

    Twitter filed paperwork today to begin the process of their long-awaited IPO, but we may not actually see the public offering until early next year.

    The paperwork–which is underwritten by Goldman Sachs–was filed under the JOBS act, which means Twitter can keep things confidential as long as they have under $1 billion in revenue per year; sources close to the situation say we could see the offering as soon as December or January, however.

    The micro-blogging network just became profitable last December with about $100 million in the final quarter, but experts say the company is on its way to making around $650 million. The announcement comes at around the time one analyst predicted in January of this year; Sam Hamadeh of PrivCo–a New York-based research firm–said that he expected Twitter to announce the IPO before the end of this year.

    “By the time Facebook [made its market debut], it had been formally monetizing for four years and its growth rate was slowing,” said Hamadeh. “Meanwhile, if Twitter files to go public at the end of this year, it will hit just the right inflection point, where its revenue is growing in the triple digits, from $80 or $90 million in 2011 to $250 million last year and what we expect will be $500 million in revenue in 2013.”

    Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was more cautious than optimistic last year after rumors began flying that the company would follow in Facebook’s path, saying they weren’t close to being ready for an initial public offering.

    “We don’t want to be public until we have very predictable quarterly earnings growth. We’re not ready to be a public company for a couple years,” Costolo said.

    Many are wondering why the company is going public now, just one year after it was reported that they had been imposing a restriction on all shareholders: no one who holds stock can sell more than 20% of their shares. As of 2011, Twitter was keeping to the “500 shareholder rule”, meaning they wouldn’t be required by the SEC to publicly disclose their financial results. With so much effort being made to stay private, there are questions being raised as to what changed the minds of the people in charge.

    “The JOBS bill was not designed for a multi-billion dollar IPO managed by Goldman Sachs. It would be useful if the reporters could report on why Twitter might want to do this or, even better, find out why they did this,” wrote New York Times commenter Steve Rogers.

    Image: Twitter

  • Twitter IPO Coming by Year’s End Says Analyst

    Another analyst has weighed in the expected Twitter IPO, and he thinks that it’s going to come sooner than others have predicted.

    Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo, a New York-based private company research firm, says that we can expect Twitter to go public by the end of the year – probably the fourth quarter. He cites a “source high up at Twitter” when making this prediction.

    Here’s his rationale:

    “By the time Facebook [made its market debut], it had been formally monetizing for four years and its growth rate was slowing,” notes Hamadeh. Meanwhile, if Twitter files to go public at the end of this year, it will hit just the right inflection point, where its revenue is growing in the triple digits, from $80 or $90 million in 2011 to $250 million last year and what we expect will be $500 million in revenue in 2013.”

    Basically, Facebook waited too long and Twitter doesn’t want to make the same mistake.

    According to Hamadeh, Twitter will price its IPO at $15 billion.

    Last week, Greencrest Capital analyst Mas Wolff put Twitter’s valuation at $11 billion, saying that it was up since the Facebook IPO back in May 2012. He said that Twitter would be making preparations to go public this year, and launch the IPO some time in 2014.

    Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been notoriously quick to douse any and all IPO fires that have been lit in the past year or so. He’s made it clear that Twitter was in no rush to go public, and that Twitter needed to be patient in the way they built the business.

    [via peHUB]