Sign up FAST! Login

WSJ says yes, Twitter is worth $10 billion.


Stashed in: Silicon Valley!, Awesome, Monetization, @ajs, Active Users, Valuation

To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:

Alyson Shontell summarizes:

The Wall Street Journal's Corporate News Editor, Dennis Berman, spent ten days trying to prove that Twitter was over-hyped at a $10 billion valuation.

But "fact intervened," he says.

Berman now believes Twitter is going to be the next Google.

Twitter has only generated revenue for the past three years, mostly via sponsored tweets — paid promotional placements that get pushed to relevant users' Twitter streams.

But the efforts have been fruitful; eMarketer predicts Twitter will rake in $808 million during 2014. Investors think that number will be even higher. They think Twitter could be pulling in $1 billion by then.

And the social network already has 200 million active accounts. Twitter users increased 40 percent during the last three quarters of 2012. It's already making about $4 per active user.

If that growth continues and Twitter is able to make $7 from 500 million users, that's revenue of $3.5 billion, which is reminiscent of Google's 2004 revenue. Margins are reportedly high for Twitter than they were for Google, at 30-40 percent.

"For simplicity's sake, let's reduce Twitter's net margins to Google's, which are a gusher-like 21 percent," Berman writes. "Value all those earnings at Google's 17-times-trading multiple, and, voilà, Twitter has a value of $12.5 billion. And you needn't tweak conditions much to get a higher number."

Next Facebook or Yahoo? Maybe.

Next Google? No way. Google is a hardcore engineering culture that builds many products. Twitter is pretty much just the one product: Twitter. 

Exactly: a 900 pound one trick pony.

You May Also Like: