Twitter has set the price of its initial public offering at $26 a share, valuing the company at roughly $18bn (£11bn), ahead of its flotation today on the New York Stock Exchange. That is above the $23 to $25 range announced on Monday and makes it the biggest market debut for a technology firm since […]
Twitter has set the price of its initial public offering at $26 a share, valuing the company at roughly $18bn (£11bn), ahead of its flotation today on the New York Stock Exchange.
That is above the $23 to $25 range announced on Monday and makes it the biggest market debut for a technology firm since Facebook went public in May 2012.
With 70 million shares sold in the offering, Twitter raised $1.8 billion.
The social network has attracted 230 million users since starting seven years ago, but is yet to make a profit.
Its losses for the third quarter of 2013 increased to $64.6m, from $21.6m a year earlier and a recent poll by Reuters/Ipsos showed that more than a third of registered users do not use the service at all.
The firm has posted an increase in its sales, which more than doubled in third quarter to $168.6m, and it is looking to raise even more revenue from advertisers outside the United States.
Twitter’s $18bn valuation includes the value of shares in compensation schemes for employees and other share awards.
Co-founder Evan Williams is the biggest shareholder in the firm with a stake of more than 10% worth more than a billion dollars.
Another of the founders, Jack Dorsey, will also become a very rich man. His 4% stake is worth more than half a billion dollars.
Biz Stone, another co-founder, is thought to have made millions by selling holdings over the last few years.
Twitter’s slowing user growth, as well as its rising losses, has made for unfavorable comparisons with Facebook, the world’s largest social network, where about 1.2 billion people used the service at least once a month in the third quarter.
Twitter had 232 million monthly users during the same period. That was up just 14 million (or 6.4 percent) from the previous quarter – a much slower growth rate than Facebook had when it was the same size.
