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In the most closely watched Silicon Valley debut since Facebook Inc in 2012, social media company Twitter Inc. has begun trading on the New York Stock Exchange, with an initial public offering of 70 million shares.
Trading under the symbol TWTR, shares opened on November 7 at $45.10 on the New York Stock Exchange, and closed at $44.90, a report on The Wall Street Journal said.
"The San Francisco-based company raised as much as $2.1 billion and ended the day with a market capitalization of about $25 billion," the report said.
In a tweet, Twitter had announced its price at $26 a share, an offering which values the company at around $18 billion – more expensive than Facebook, which debuted on the market on May 18 last year.
Reuters reported that with a price range of $23 to $25 per share, Twitter could raise up to $2 billion, should the company exercise an over allotment option of 10.5 million shares.
The San Francisco-based company earlier said it seeks to raise $1 billion.
Since it was founded seven years ago, the microblogging platform has become highly influential, counting world leaders, celebrities, and corporations among its users. However, its growth rate has slowed at 6.4 percent with 232 million monthly users in the third quarter – only 14 million more from the previous quarter, as reported on The New York Times.
On Forbes.com, Tom Taulli shared what some tech CEOs had to say about how Twitter’s stock would perform. inPowered co-founder and CEO Peyman Nilforoush said "Looking at the vulnerability of Twitter’s ad business versus the near term upside in mobile, I would recommend Twitter as a worthy short term investment at the $20-25 IPO price currently set, but would stay away long term."
Sway Medical CEO and founder Chase Curtis said Twitter will be a good three to five year investment. "Twitter doesn’t fit the typical IPO profile as it will likely not even turn a profit until 2015 and we won’t see a major increase in price over the first six months."
