Twitter hired Morgan Stanley managing director Cynthia Gaylor to head its corporate development.
Talk of Twitter IPO heated up following this hire. Investment bankers typically are not permitted to be on Twitter for work purposes. Some analysts feel this appointment is a clear indicator that Twitter is preparing for an IPO.
Excited to welcome @cynthiag as head of @twitter corp dev. She’s joining a great team /cc @jess
— Alex Macgillivray (@amac) May 2, 2013
However, last week, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey said that the company isn’t even thinking about an IPO, despite months of speculation in the media that the social networking giant is preparing to go public. Jack Dorsey warned that there have been plenty of post-IPO tech flops such as Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn.
According to Gaylor’s profile on LinkedIn, she has worked on technology deals including the sale of Zappos to Amazon.com, Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Her clients’ profile includes Facebook, Zynga, Netflix and LinkedIn. She is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Gaylor also worked in technology investment banking at Hambrecht & Quist. According to her LinkedIn profile, she has advised on more than 150 transactions, involving over $100 billion in value. She advised clients across a broad array of strategic financing activities including IPO, follow-on offerings, equity linked, private placement and debt security transactions.
In her first tweet since the announcement of her hiring by Twitter, Gaylor said that she’s looking forward to joining and focusing on M & A strategy.
The San Francisco-based Twitter is targeting $1 billion in revenue in 2014. It will probably draw on Gaylor’s background in the securities industry as it prepares for a potential market debut.
The microblogging pioneer was founded in 2006 and was valued at about $9 billion in January after early employees sold $80 million in shares to a fund managed by BlackRock Inc.
Twitter is widely predicted to hold a share sale before long to help it bankroll expansion and give early funders an exit option. ZDNet predicts Twitter would still go for a major IPO though it is not known how well the company would fare on the market, without a strong and stable revenue stream.
Twitter IPO Rumors:
IPO rumors have been circulating around Twitter for some time and they intensified late last year after a piece in The New York Times on CEO Dick Costolo. This piece speculated that Twitter’s next big step is to go public on the stock market, and the insiders say the current goal is to have an IPO in 2014.
