Twitter's IPO Filing: What It Means
Geege Schuman stashed this in Twitter
Calm down, Internet: Twitter is not going public just yet, nor any time in the next month or so at the very least. The company has filed a "confidential" S-1 IPO with the SEC, meaning it signaled its intent to go public at some point and is getting its paperwork ducks in a row.
Why is the filing confidential? So-called "emerging growth" companies are allowed to so that now, according to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) act signed into law last year.
"Confidentially."
How does a confidential filing help would-be investors? I guess it's really not for their benefit.
But the holidays wouldn't be the best time to launch a company. (Yes, Zynga and Groupon launched around then, but that kind of proves the point.) Squeezing in the investment road show between three weeks from now and Thanksgiving would be tight. Furthermore, Facebook isn't exactly a model for how to do an IPO right. We wouldn't be surprised if Twitter takes a little more time to do it right and launches in early 2014.
How much will it be valued at? Again, that's very speculative. In January, one analyst said the company was worth $11 billion. More recently, sources inside the company told GigaOm that hedge funds had tried to buy the company outright — for around $14 billion, or around $27 a share. Don't be surprised if Twitter prices its shares below that.
Hedge funds tried to buy Twitter?! That's insane.
Looks like a lot of people would buy at $12 billion:
Especially now that Facebook at $45/share is worth $110 billion, Twitter seems super cheap!
Twitter IPO will come sooner than you thinkA source close to the company says that we should see an actual S-1 from Twitter within the next several weeks, and that today's announcement was more about legal maneuvering than it was about controlling its own press. Remember, Twitter didn't say that it filed confidentially today. It said today that it had filed confidentially. See the distinction? My understanding is that the original filing was submitted a while ago, and that most of the SEC review is completed.
Moreover, Twitter would expect to launch its road-show exactly 21 days after the S-1 is filed, which would be its minimum waiting period (some companies wait months, if not years). In other words, this is designed to be a 2013 offering rather than a 2014 offering.
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/12/twitter-ipo-plans/
found in tweet by @KurtWagner8, who says @danprimack "is usually right."
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6:11 PM Sep 12 2013