It's a good day for the world seen in 140-character bursts.
Twitter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday with an 80 percent gain in its stock price. Within a half hour, the stock had powered up 92 percent, to $50.
At midday, shares were at $45.91, up 76 percent.
The social network priced its IPO at a higher than expected $26 a share, and it rocketed to more than $48 at the open.
Twitter reached the decision after a lengthy debate between the underwriters and company executives.
Bloomberg News noted that the trading went off without a hitch, unlike the Facebook debut 18 months ago. A design flaw in the Nasdaq's opening auction sent Facebook into contortions at its opening. The New York Stock Exchange didn't rush Twitter's opening, either. It took 79 minutes for shares to start tradaing, which made it one of the longer opening auctions, Bloomberg noted.
On Monday, Twitter raised its price range to between $23 and $25 a share from an initial target of $17 to $20. The final IPO price is more than 50 percent higher than the low end of its original price estimate, underscoring the soaring demand from institutional investors.
Twitter could not have picked better timing with its IPO coming as stock market nears record highs and the IPO market surges.
Twitter is trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the ticker symbol TWTR.
The company lost $143 million over the last four quarters on revenue of $534 million, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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 been tweeting for only about a year and wasn't buying Twitter stock Thursday.
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.
TWTR data by YCharts
Twitter began trading on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday with an 80 percent gain in its stock price. Within a half hour, the stock had powered up 92 percent, to $50.
At midday, shares were at $45.91, up 76 percent.
The social network priced its IPO at a higher than expected $26 a share, and it rocketed to more than $48 at the open.
Twitter reached the decision after a lengthy debate between the underwriters and company executives.
Bloomberg News noted that the trading went off without a hitch, unlike the Facebook debut 18 months ago. A design flaw in the Nasdaq's opening auction sent Facebook into contortions at its opening. The New York Stock Exchange didn't rush Twitter's opening, either. It took 79 minutes for shares to start tradaing, which made it one of the longer opening auctions, Bloomberg noted.
On Monday, Twitter raised its price range to between $23 and $25 a share from an initial target of $17 to $20. The final IPO price is more than 50 percent higher than the low end of its original price estimate, underscoring the soaring demand from institutional investors.
Twitter could not have picked better timing with its IPO coming as stock market nears record highs and the IPO market surges.
Twitter is trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the ticker symbol TWTR.
The company lost $143 million over the last four quarters on revenue of $534 million, according to its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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 been tweeting for only about a year and wasn't buying Twitter stock Thursday.
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.
TWTR data by YCharts