On Wednesday, Twitter announced it’ll hit the stock exchange today with 70 million shares at $26, valuing it at just over $18 billion. The San Francisco-based company is set to raise around $2 billion from the IPO. An option to sell an additional 10.5 million shares would, if carried through, push these figures even higher.
The $26 share price is a buck above the high-end of the range the company forecast at the start of the week and $6 dollars above an earlier forecast, indicating increasing interest among prospective investors.
Twitter’s IPO is the most eagerly anticipated flotation since Facebook’s in May last year, though Dorsey and co. will be hoping for a smoother run of things.
The social networking giant’s launch on the Nasdaq was delayed by technical problems for half-an-hour, with more glitches occurring throughout the day leaving confused investors wondering if their trades had gone through. The company ended its first day of trading with the value of its shares only a little above their $38 opening price.
A month after Facebook floated, its shares were worth only $30, with steely nerved investors having to wait over a year before seeing significant improvements in their value. At the time of writing its shares are worth $49.12.
Twitter announced details of its IPO pricing via its microblogging site on Thursday afternoon, laying out the information on an image – 140 characters just wasn’t going to cut it in this case.
“We’ve posted our initial public offering of 70 million shares of our common stock at a price of $26,” tweet announced, adding, “Our shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on November 7, 2013 under the symbol ‘TWTR’”.
Now with 230 million active users, Twitter has certainly come a long away since co-founder Jack Dorsey sent out the very first tweet in March 2006, which, in case you’re interested, read, “just setting up my twttr”.
