Twitter hoping to raise $1bn with share offering

TWITTER has announced plans to sell 70m shares in a bid to raise around $1bn (£617m).
By The Newsroom
Published 26th Oct 2013, 01:01 BST
Twitter will sell 70 million sharesTwitter will sell 70 million shares
Twitter will sell 70 million shares

The shares will be priced between $17 (£10.49) and $20 (£12.34), according to amended documents filed with the American stock exchange.

The social networking site will offer 80,500,000 shares, which is just less than one-fifth of the company’s total outstanding shares before options.

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It means the company, which trades under the name TWTR, values itself at as much as $10.9bn (£6.3bn).

The microblogging site announced its intention to float in a tweet last month.

Twitter currently has 200m active users, who send more than 500m tweets a day.

Twitter filed paperwork for the initial public offering (IPO) last month, with experts valuing the site at between $10bn and $15bn (£6.3bn to £9.5bn), with most bets around the $11bn (£6.9bn) mark.

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The initial public offering sparked discussion on Wall Street. Social networking site Facebook which floated in May last year for $104bn £66.2bn).

However, the company experienced an initial slump in shares amid concerns over how it could boost revenue from the growing number of mobile users.

Twitter, founded in 2006, has grown to become one of the largest and most powerful social media platforms in the world.

The San Francisco-based site is used as a tool by celebrities, journalists and millions around the globe who publish 140-character messages in real-time to reach fans bypassing traditional media outlets, with some becoming as popular for online tweets as they are for TV and movie appearances.

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It has 200m users worldwide – including 10m active users in the UK – who post around 400m tweets a day.

The company is believed to be on track to post $583m (£368m) in revenues this year and $1bn (£630m) next year.

The United Kingdom is Twitter’s biggest market outside America, with $43m (£27m) in revenues in the nine months to the end of September, which made up 40 per cent of its overseas turnover.

Prominent Yorkshire Twitter users include former Yorkshire and England cricketer Michael Vaughan, tourism chief Gary Verity, Leeds City Council chief executive Tom Riordan, and senior Labour politicians Ed Balls and John Prescott. The Yorkshire Post itself is popular on twitter @yorkshirepost and @gregwright.YP

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