Twitter's regulatory filing on Tuesday, October 15, has revealed that the company will debut on New York Stock Exchange, a subsidiary of NYSE Euronext, rather than Nasdaq Stock Exchange.
Created in 2006, Twitter is an online social networking and micro blogging service that enable users to send and read "tweets", which are text messages limited to 140 characters. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, but also has offices in New York City, Boston, and San Antonio.
Twitter rapidly gained worldwide popularity and has millions of users worldwide accessing the service on a daily basis. Twitter is amongst the top 10 most visited websites globally and is also described as "the SMS of the Internet."
Twitter notes that it hit 231.7 million monthly users by the end of Q3 2013, which is up by 6.13 percent from 218.3 million at the end of Q2 2013. However, the growth rate has declined as the company had 6.86 percent growth in Q2 2013, 10.27 percent in Q1 2013, and 10.77 percent growth in Q4 2012.
Twitter's IPO listing with NYSE will be one of the most highly anticipated technology sector IPO since Facebook's listing on the Nasdaq in May 2012. Unfortunately, Facebook's IPO was surrounded with trading-order failures and delays. As a result, the Securities and Exchange Commission had fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest ever levied against an exchange.
Winning an IPO is always a big deal for an exchange and a high-profile name such as Twitter will be eagerly awaited by the exchange. If Twitter's IPO goes well, it should give the NYSE an edge in luring other companies in the social media sector. According to research firm Dealogic, the NYSE currently includes 10 of the 20 largest technology IPOs so far this year.
"We are grateful for Twitter's confidence in our platform and look forward to partnering with them," said Marissa Arnold, a spokeswoman for NYSE.
Twitter reported $422 million as revenue in the first three quarters of 2013, which is an increase of 120 percent from 2012. The current growth rate has resulted in the cut down of the firm's overall losses.
