Twitter Makes IPO Filing Public, Will List As Symbol TWTR

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Twitter, which confidentially filed for an IPO last month, has finally made the details of that filing public. Obviously, the filing was considerably more than the 140 characters that its users area allowed in a single tweet. In fact, if Twitter’s filing was done by Twitter it would be 4,439 tweets long.

Twitter Makes IPO Filing Public, Will List As Symbol TWTR

Twitter’s revenue jumped 198% to $316.9M in 2012, according to its IPO filing. “Advertising services” revenue has soared in the past few years and represents the bulk of the company’s sales. That doesn’t mean that the company has yet reached profitability.

Revenue is $254 million through six months, that’s up from $122 million a year ago. Through six months, its net loss is $69 million, which compares to a loss of $49 million last year.

Goldman Sachs will take the lead in the offering along with Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, BofA, Deutshe Bank, Allen & Co. and CODE Advisors.

The company posted a $79.4M loss for the period, narrower than the $128.3M it had lost in 2011. As reported earlier, Goldman Sachs is leading the offering with Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan. BofA, Deutsche Bank are also on the deal, along with Allen & Co. and CODE Advisers.

According to the company the biggest risk to Twitter is keeping users engaged with the microblogging service.

“If people do not perceive our products and services to be useful, reliable and trustworthy, we may not be able to attract users or increase the frequency of their engagement with our platform and the ads that we display.”

The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, also included a brief letter in the filing that read

“Twitter was born on March 21, 2006, with just 24 characters.We started with a simple idea: share what you’re doing, 140 characters at a time. People took that idea and strengthened it by using @names to have public conversations, #hashtags to organize movements, and Retweets to spread news around the world. Twitter represents a service shaped by the people, for the people. The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve–and do not detract from–a free and global conversation.Thank you for supporting us through your Tweets, your business, and now, your potential ownership of this service we continue to build with you.Yours, @twitter”

In explaining what it planned to do with the $1 billion that it is looking to raise was explained as, “The principal purposes of this offering are to increase our capitalization and financial flexibility, create a public market for our common stock and enable access to the public equity markets for us and our stockholders.”
“We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures. We anticipate making capital expenditures in 2013 of approximately $225 million to $275 million, and we may use a portion of the net proceeds to fund our anticipated capital expenditures. We also may use a portion of the net proceeds to satisfy our anticipated tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the settlement of our outstanding Pre-2013 RSUs, or we may choose to allow our employees who are not executive officers holding such awards to sell shares of our common stock in the public market to satisfy their income tax obligations related to the vesting and settlement of such awards. …

“Additionally, we may use a portion of the net proceeds to acquire businesses, products, services or technologies. However, except for our proposed acquisition of MoPub in exchange for shares of our common stock, we do not have agreements or commitments for any material acquisitions at this time.”

That $1 billion should be viewed as a placeholder. Filers are required to list an amount for the first filing. Twitter could raise considerably more or even less. Facebook, for example listed $5 billion as the amount it wished to raise, the deal ultimately price out at over $16 billion.

Somewhat surprisingly, the filing did not disclose whether Twitter, which will trade with the ticker TWTR, on the NYSE or the Nasdaq.

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