Twitter Priced at $26 per Share

Twitter ($TWTR) will start trading tomorrow. The company will debut on the NYSE under the symbol TWTR. The underwriters have announced a price of $26 per share. That values the company at $14.2 billion.

Everyone on Wall Street has their fingers crossed on this one since the Facebook ($FB) IPO was a bit of a flop. Trading was delayed and the stock didn’t do well for several weeks. I suspect that FB wasn’t well advised by their bankers. Also, I think they got greedy. Twitter seems to be avoiding these mistakes.

Twitter is selling 70 million shares to the public so it will raise $1.82 billion for the company. I strongly suspect that the price will pop once the shares hit the market.

So is Twitter a good buy? The heck if I know.

With investing, I rely on the fundamentals of a business. One of the limits of fundamental analysis is that it assumes the general stability of the business environment. With a company like Twitter, that environment is far from stable. I can make a pretty good guess as to what Harris will look like in three years. But with Twitter, I have no earthly idea.

Twitter is currently losing money, and it will continue to do so. If things go well, they may turn a profit by 2015. Again, that’s if things go well. At $26 per share, twitter is being valued at 12.4 times next year’s estimated sales. Facebook currently trades at 11.6 times 2014 sales, and LinkedIn is at 12.2 times. That’s a rich valuation.

Until I can see a consistent positive cash flow stream from Twitter, I’m staying far away from this stock. That’s not a moral judgement against the stock. I wish them well. But for my kind of investing, I never take risks I don’t have to.

Posted by on November 6th, 2013 at 9:56 pm


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.