Twitter To File For IPO By Year End [REPORT]

According to reports Twitter is likely to file for its initial public offering by the end of this year. Mike Isaacs over at AllThingsD says that numerous sources familiar with the matter expect the company to file its S-1, the first official step on the road to an IPO, by the end of 2013. The company is expected to go public in 2014.

Twitter’s valuation is difficult to enumerate, simply because it has not gone public yet. The best metric for valuing the company is the price that private investors have paid for shares in the company. Back in May it was revealed that GSV Capital Corp. valued its shares in the company at $15.80 each, putting the value of the entire company at $9.8 billion.

Twitter trying to avoid Facebook taint

Twitter was rumored to be planning an IPO last year in the wake of the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) IPO. After the massive problems caused by the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) IPO, among other 2012 IPOs, made a 2012 IPO for the micro blogging site ill-advised. The company’s leaders may believe that enough time has passed for investors to forget the social IPO unpleasantness.

Twitter, and the investors that own parts of it, will have learned lessons from the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) IPO. It’s unlikely that the same mistakes will be made twice, and the company is likely to pitch its value closer to fair than those in charge of the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) IPO did.

Twitter IPO roadshow

Twitter will be the highest profile IPO since the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) disaster, and it will surely attract a huge amount of media and popular attention. That level of attention makes an IPO much more difficult, as Facebook found out to its detriment. Twitter is bound to go public some time in the future, but all of the Ts had better be crossed when it does.

Twitter is expected to have revenue of between $500 and $600 million in 2013, but that number is set to almost double next year to $1 billion. The company is not a real money maker yet, but it is monetizing and it’s doing it with the gradual ease of a business that doesn’t have to answer to public shareholders.

The Twitter IPO is coming. We’re likely to hear about it for the first time in the fourth quarter of this year, if the sources talking to Isaacs are right, assuming nothing changes between now and then.