Twitter gunning to go public before Thanksgiving, says report
The social network reportedly wants to raise more than $1 billion before the US holiday, which is just two months away.
Twitter and its bankers will be fat and happy come Turkey Day if inside sources have their facts straight.
The social network is gunning to get its shares on the public market prior to Thanksgiving and plans to raise more than $1 billion through the offering, according to sources who spoke to Reuters. The company is also said to have picked Goldman Sachs as the lead underwriter for the IPO, and is currently diving up fees for the bank and others involved including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Bank of America.
In the tweet retweeted 'round the world, Twitter last week announced its intention to become a public company. The company noted that it had filed a confidential S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a provision allowed under the 2012 JOBS Act.
The 7-year-old social network has more than 200 million active users and is projected by eMarketer to make more than $580 million in global advertising in 2013. Twitter has been valued in the past at $10 billion, but analysts are pegging its valuation at closer to $15 billion, according to Reuters.
When Twitter does go public, Wall Street will be looking for a much smoother public offering than that of Silicon Valley rival Facebook. Twitter has at least one thing working in its favor: The company has already mastered how to profit from its mobile attention -- some 60 percent of users access Twitter from smartphones or tablets -- something Facebook only figured out after going public.