It's been a while in the making but Twitter's big day under the spotlight has finally arrived. Twitter announced a starting price of $26 per share yesterday via tweet in what is being billed as one of the hottest IPOs since Facebook went public in May of 2012.
Twitter starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange today and will initially offer 70 million shares to the public. At $26 per share, that puts the company's value at $14.2 billion and we are told there are another 10.5 million shares on tap should demand call for it.
The microblogging platform initially planned to offer shares in the $23 to $25 range but after executives and their bankers made the rounds with money managers to drum up interest, they decided to raise it a buck to $26 in the belief that demand would be hot.
Twitter said in an SEC filing earlier this week that they plan to use funds raised from the IPO for general corporate purposes which includes working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures, to increase their capitalization and financial flexibility and to create a public market for their common stock.
Any bets on how Twitter will do today and over the coming weeks? A strong start would be good for investors but it would mean Twitter left money on the table and a poor showing is obviously not good either. Best bet for Twitter is a somewhat solid pop but nothing too over-the-top. With any luck, they'll fare better than social networking rival Facebook did a year ago.