Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has just officially opened at the New York Stock Exchange. It’s opening price is $45.10 per share, giving it the highest valuation of any tech stock ever, according to Bloomberg Television. The first trade came at 10:49 a.m. Eastern, and more than 30 million shares traded in the first eight minutes, according to CNBC.
The Google stock chart for Twitter will blow your mind completely. It shows that Twitter is up an incredible 90% and rising rapidly.
INSERT GOOGLE STOCK CHART HERE: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:TWTR
The company set a price of $26 a share last night, and just a short while ago, several media outlets were reporting possible opening prices of more than double that amount—between $43 and $47 a share. Now we know exactly how much.
Twitter’s underwriters certainly got their wish of beating the $40 per share mark for the company’s opening price.
Twitter’s multiples sound crazy
Cory Johnson of Bloomberg Television reports via his Twitter account that at $45 per share, Twitter has the highest valuation of any tech stock ever. That gives the micro-blogging site a market capitalization of around $31.6 billion and multiples of 58.5 times sales and 1509 times adjusted EBITDA. He sums this up with the perfect two-word comment.
“Good Lord,” Johnson tweeted.
Twitter price targets set lower
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s opening price beat the expectations of some of the most bullish analysts, like Mark S. Mahaney, Andrew Sequin and their team at RBC Capital Markets. As of last night, they had a $33 per share price target and an Outperform rating on Twitter. In determining their price target, they used a multiple of just 15 times their 2015 revenue estimate of $1.57 billion and 70 times their 2015 EBITDA estimate of $289 million. They reported last night that those were the highest multiples in the sector and that their revenue estimates were the highest also.
They believe Twitter will end up becoming an Internet utility just like Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). The analysts say the micro-blogging site is a “Real-Time, Conversational & Distributed platform” and is becoming “an essential service for consumers, businesses, media companies and advertisers.”
The advantages of investing in Twitter
The RBC analysts note that there are some big advantages to getting in on Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) right now. They note that Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has already proven that it is possible to successfully monetize a social network. They also call Twitter “a natural beneficiary of the single biggest Internet trend today,” which is mobile. In addition, the analysts say Twitter provides “in-the-moment-marketing / monetization at a scale that only” Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) currently provides.
They see some big opportunities ahead for Twitter, particularly in online advertising, which they estimate will be a $150 billion market by 2016. Currently the company has a less than 1% share of the market, so there’s plenty of room to grow. Also Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has more than 230 million monthly active users, including celebrities, thought leaders and world leaders, and with 123% year over year advertising revenue growth, they see Twitter as an attractive investment.
The analysts report that their proprietary survey of 600 online markets suggests Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has the third biggest return on investment among major Web advertising platforms, following Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB).
