Tweet success: Twitter set to launch $15bn flotation

Speculation is mounting that social networking giant Twitter may launch on the stock market as early as this August.

Earlier this year, US-based PrivCo which provides business and financial research on major privately-held companies speculated that the social networking giant was likely to follow in the footsteps of Facebook and launch a $15bn (€11.5bn) initial public offering (IPO) next year.

While some commentators are speculating it could be earlier, PrivCo chief executive Sam Hamadeh said in January that Twitter would probably learn from the mistakes made by Facebook when going public.

“Twitter will learn from Facebook’s flawed playbook and do the opposite,” said Mr Hamadeh.

“Twitter will conservatively price its IPO at 30 times revenue, or $15bn. Unlike Facebook, which waited too long to IPO [until its growth rate decelerated], Twitter will IPO at just the right inflection point, while revenue grows in triple digits and with its final pre-IPO quarter reported at its seasonally strongest fourth quarter.”

Facebook came out with a $16bn IPO in May.

PrivCo said Twitter’s potential IPO was based on recent measures which have successfully raised revenues for the micro-blogging site.

These include promoted tweets, targeted tweets for advertisers and a partnership with photo-sharing site Pinterest.

With its platform for a maximum of 140 character tweets, Twitter has become a global phenomenon and is estimated to have in the region of 200m users across the world.

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