Twitter is expected to launch its first entry into the public market on Thursday.
The social media platform has been preparing for weeks, taking its presentation to possible investors in a "road show" and publically releasing its internal figures for the last two years. Now that road will lead to its IPO on Thursday, as the company is expected to be gaining upwards of $1.75 billion in its debut on Wall Street.
In filings earlier in the week, Twitter priced its shares from $23 to $25 per share, which is an increase from its earlier price range of $17 to $20, and according to anonymous sources for Bloomberg, investors so interested in Twitter that its stock was oversubscribed by the end of Oct., before they even began taking orders. The move upwards in share price puts the value of the company at an incredible $13.9 billion, which is about 26 times Twitter's revenue in the last year.
As a private company, Twitter has not made revenues as high a priority as development of its user base, of which it has about 218 million, according to its pre-IPO public filing. About 100 million of those users are active on a daily basis, which is up from 30 million two years prior.
Meanwhile, the company lost a net of $69 million this year (and $49 million in the previous year) due to marketing and research costs. But its revenue has been up, bringing in $253 in the first half of 2013 alone - which, while not being close to the $13.9 billion that its high-end priced stocks are estimated to total in market value, is a sign of growth. Last year, it made $317 million for the entire 12-month period.
Part of the promise of Twitter for investors (which is also the fear of core Twitter users) is the potential for more advertising on the 140 character social media platform. Ad resistance for core Twitter users aside, according to a new survey by Frank N. Magid Associates (via the LA Times), consumers respond more positively to ads on Twitter than they do on Facebook.
And Twitter is natively mobile, unlike Facebook and other social media networks, meaning it could coast more easily than any other social media network into the future of mobile advertising, as mobile continues to grow faster than other internet media. Driven by the use of smartphones and tablets, almost 70 percent of the U.S. aged 12 to 64 access social networks at least once a week, with almost 80 percent of the coveted 18 to 34-year-old demographic using a mobile device to do so.
And while Facebook is the largest social network, it hasn't grown in usage, while Twitter has grown by about 14 percent in the last year. "Twitter is the largest social network that is still growing in the U.S.," said Magid's executive director of strategy consulting, Natalie Clayton, to the LA Times. "Facebook is stagnant, Google+ is stagnant. But Twitter is still chugging along."
Still, that doesn't mean that some investors and analysts aren't being wary of the much-hyped IPO. Despite Twitter's attempts to avoid the pre-IPO speculation and opening day debacle that Facebook experienced, some think Twitter has been oversold. For example, "the Twitter IPO seems more reminiscent of the pre-2000 dot-com 'Bubble era' than other recent tech IPOS in 2012 and 2013," said financial ratings firm RapidRatings.
We'll see on Thursday whether eager investors or the nay-sayers prove to be right.