Twitter’s share price rose a massive 73% on its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at $44.90, as the social network exceeded Wall Street’s expectations. Watch this video from the Daily Telegraph, showing the Twitter stock float as it happened, below: The closing price, under the new trading symbol of […]
Twitter’s share price rose a massive 73% on its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at $44.90, as the social network exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.
Watch this video from the Daily Telegraph, showing the Twitter stock float as it happened, below:
The closing price, under the new trading symbol of ‘TWTR’ gives Twitter a value of more than $31bn (£19.3bn) and raised $1.8bn for the social network.
The strong debut came despite the fact that Twitter has never turned a profit in seven years of existence. Revenue has been growing, but the company is also investing heavily in more data centres and hiring more employees.
Some of Twitter’s users, including Star Trek actor Sir Patrick Stewart, were given the opportunity to ring the opening bell instead of executives.
The company also sent a tweet to mark the occasion, posting a one-word message which read: “#Ring!”
Twitter initially offered 70 million shares, with an option to buy another 10.5 million.
Stock price ‘on par with Yahoo and CBS’.
More valuable than BSkyB?
Although the closing price fell 20 cents short of the opening price of $45.10, it was still well above the $26 IPO price.
This enterprise value puts the social network on par with very profitable media companies like CBS, Discovery Communications and Yahoo, and a higher valuation than corporations such as BSkyB, Sainsbury’s and BAE Systems.
Twitter, led by CEO Dick Costolo, earlier this week had already raised the price range for its IPO amid signs of strong demand. The company’s market debut is the biggest US tech IPO since Facebook, which went public in May 2012.
The San Francisco-based company, which has been looking for ways to bring in revenue, lost $137 million in the past year.
Twitter, started seven years ago, provides users a platform to share short messages with each other. Its active user base has since swelled to over 200 million each month.
Co-founder Evan Williams has 56.9 million shares of Twitter worth nearly $2.6 billion as of Thursday’s closing price, and co-founder Jack Dorsey’s 23.4 million shares are worth more than $1 billion.
