Now that Twitter Inc. has raised its initial public offering (IPO) price range from a prior spread of $17 to $20 to a new range of $23 to $25 there remain plenty of analysts who think that is a justifiable number. Counting outstanding shares of restricted stock and options, the company will have nearly 695 million shares out in the world and at the mid-point of the new range the company would be valued at $13.6 billion.
How does that stack up with some other IPOs in the tech world? Financial analysis firm Sageworks Inc. has prepared a handy chart comparing Twitter's pending IPO with those of Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL). Apple went public in 1980, Microsoft in 1985, and Facebook just last year. In the following chart, Sageworks uses the number of Class A common shares outstanding to compute Twitter's valuation.
Source: Sageworks Inc.
As Sageworks' chairman notes, "[Twitter] is still losing money, and at least Facebook was profitable when they went public. Proponents of the stock are talking about the potential of Twitter, but most companies that go public have potential, so this is immaterial to the conversation." Ouch.
The IPO is set to price on Wednesday night and begin trading on Thursday on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "TWTR."
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