By Olivia Oran and Gerry Shih
Nov 7 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc stock soared 92
percent in their first day of trading on Thursday on the New
York Stock Exchange as investors snapped up shares in the
microblogging site, pushing its market value to a heady $25
billion.
The shares opened at $45.10 a share, up from the initial
public offering price of $26 set on Wednesday, then added to
those gains, hitting a high of $50.
Sources said the flotation had drawn strong demand, with
investors asking for 30 times the number of shares on offer as
they bet on potential growth at the money-losing social media
company.
The opening price valued the shares at about 22 times
forecast 2014 sales, nearly double that multiple at social media
rivals Facebook Inc and LinkedIn Corp.
Twitter executives including Chief Executive Dick Costolo
and founder Jack Dorsey thronged to the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange to witness the IPO. The Big Board snatched the
offering away from Nasdaq after the normally tech-focused Nasdaq
stumbled with the larger Facebook flotation last year.
"Facebook was so overhyped people felt like they couldn't
miss out," said Kenneth Polcari, a senior floor official at
O'Neil Securities Inc. "Twitter isn't like that, though you can
feel the excitement."
British actor Patrick Stewart rang the opening bell at the
exchange together with 9-year-old Vivienne Harr, who started a
charity to end childhood slavery using the microblogging site.
"I guess I represent the poster boy for Twitter," Stewart
said, adding that he had only been tweeting for about a year and
wasn't buying Twitter stock today.
Twitter's building staff opened its offices in San Francisco
extra early, at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday. By 7:30 a.m., hundreds of
employees had flocked to their 9th floor cafeteria to watch
Stewart ring the opening bell on TV.
The microblogging network priced its 70 million shares at
above the targeted range of $23 to $25, which had been raised
once before. The IPO values Twitter at $14.1 billion, with the
potential to reach $14.4 billion if underwriters exercise an
overallotment option.
If the full overallotment is exercised, as expected, Twitter
could raise $2.1 billion, making it the second largest Internet
offering in the United States behind Facebook Inc's $16
billion IPO last year and ahead of Google Inc's 2004
IPO, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Twitter boasts 230 million global users, including heads of
state and celebrities, but it lost $65 million in its most
recent quarter and questions remained about long-term prospects.
It also lacks the ubiquity of Facebook or the "stickiness"
factor that keeps people checking the No. 1 social network on a
daily basis.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll last month showed that 36 percent of
people who signed up for a Twitter account say they do not use
it.
Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/twitter-set-debut-ipo-30-141551118.html
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