Twitter IPO S-1 filing

Okay, finally, here is the Form S-1 filing for the Twitter IPO. It certainly contains a lot of interesting information, but does not include the offering share price or number of shares to be offered.

 

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513390321/d564001ds1.htm

 

It opens with this statement:

This is an initial public offering of shares of common stock of Twitter, Inc.

Prior to this offering, there has been no public market for the common stock. It is currently estimated that the initial public offering price per share will be between $         and $        . We intend to list the common stock on the              under the symbol "TWTR".

We are an "emerging growth company" as defined under the federal securities laws and, as such, may elect to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for future filings.

There they give the ticker symbol as "TWTR", but no stock exchanged its specified yet. Note the blank space for price range and exchange.

 

The Prospectus Summary starts with:

TWITTER, INC.

Twitter is a global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time. By developing a fundamentally new way for people to create, distribute and discover content, we have democratized content creation and distribution, enabling any voice to echo around the world instantly and unfiltered.

Our platform is unique in its simplicity: Tweets are limited to 140 characters of text. This constraint makes it easy for anyone to quickly create, distribute and discover content that is consistent across our platform and optimized for mobile devices. As a result, Tweets drive a high velocity of information exchange that makes Twitter uniquely "live." We aim to become an indispensable daily companion to live human experiences.

People are at the heart of Twitter. We have already achieved significant global scale, and we continue to grow. We have more than 215 million monthly active users, or MAUs, and more than 100 million daily active users, spanning nearly every country. Our users include millions of people from around the world, as well as influential individuals and organizations, such as world leaders, government officials, celebrities, athletes, journalists, sports teams, media outlets and brands. Our users create approximately 500 million Tweets every day.

Twitter is a public, real-time platform where any user can create a Tweet and any user can follow other users. We do not impose restrictions on whom a user can follow, which greatly enhances the breadth and depth of available content and allows users to discover the content they care about most. Additionally, users can be followed by thousands or millions of other users without requiring a reciprocal relationship, enhancing the ability of our users to reach a broad audience. The public nature of our platform allows us and others to extend the reach of Twitter content beyond our properties. Media outlets distribute Tweets beyond our properties to complement their content by making it more timely, relevant and comprehensive. Tweets have appeared on over one million third-party websites, and in the second quarter of 2013 there were approximately 30 billion online impressions of Tweets off of our properties.

Twitter provides a compelling and efficient way for people to stay informed about their interests, discover what is happening in their world right now and interact directly with each other. We enable the timely creation and distribution of ideas and information among people and organizations at a local and global scale. Our platform allows users to browse through Tweets quickly and explore content more deeply through links, photos, media and other applications that can be attached to each Tweet. As a result, when events happen in the world, whether planned, like sporting events and television shows, or unplanned, like natural disasters and political revolutions, the digital experience of those events happens in real time on Twitter. People can communicate with each other during these events as they occur, creating powerful shared experiences.

 

My understanding is that it will be at least three more weeks before Twitter can start the road show. I'm not sure how much longer after that before trading opens, but I read that they were expecting that it would occur before Thanksgiving.

 

Stay tuned for further details.

 

-- Jack Krupansky