Twitter's share soared high today after investors scrambled to get a piece of what some hopes to be the next blockbuster social network company since Facebook.
The company, which had priced its IPO at $26 a share late Wednesday, saw its shares debut under the ticker TWTR at $45.10. Twitter co-founders Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone were present at the NYSE; however, the honor of ringing the opening bell was given to Twitter users, including actor Patrick Stewart. The shares, which were heavily oversubscribed, touched a peak of $50.09 before noon and ended the day at $44.90 (up 72.69 percent). The stock climb helped Twitter's market value to grow to more than $31 billion. Though, this pales in comparison to Facebook's market value of $120 billion, yet, it is more in line with professional networking site LinkedIn's $26 billion.
So far, Facebook and LinkedIn shares have grown by 80 percent since the beginning of 2013 and Twitter's public debut could encourage other social media networks to attempt and grab a share of the online advertising business. .
"We're entering a pretty extended period of optimism," said Rick Summer, an equity analyst at Morningstar. "There is a lot of downside risk at these levels," he added, referring to Twitter's opening price.
Summer believes that Twitter is capable of having 1 billion users in the next 10 years, which is a significant jump from its current 230 million. Twitter has managed to increase monetization by 20 percent but more needs to be done.
However, one analyst believes Twitter is too expensive right now on the stock market. "With a price that pushes into the high 30s and beyond, Twitter is simply too expensive," Pivotal Research's Brian Wieser wrote in a note cutting his rating on the stock to "sell" from "buy". "One way to justify a $45 price in our model would involve presuming that Twitter could generate more than $6bn in annual revenue by 2018. However, we think that would seem overly optimistic."
Only time will tell if Twitter will ever end up in the same boat as Facebook. The world's largest social network opened on the stock exchange with a bang, however; things didn't work out as some have thought.
