Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Abdulaziz Alsaud, The head of the Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), said his private ownership and KHC ownership raised in Twitter’s shares, without specifying the proportion, pointing out that the share surged by 200%, in compared to the original investment price.
In 2011, Bin Talal bought stake worth $ 300 million in mini Baldwin ‘Twitter’ company, and it was not disclosed the value of purchase.
Throughout Twitter, Bin Talal said I and KHC raised our ownership in IPO Twitter, and its shares closed the first IPO market which up more than 200% of our investment.
It is worth mentioning that Twitter share witnessed highly rising in the first IPO, and closed at $44 per-share, which more than 70% of the IPO price.
Twitter has priced its initial public offering of stock at $26 per share tomorrow. But after the Facebook fiasco last year, the San Jose Mercury News wondered yesterday, if it had set the price set too high.
“After all, just a week ago, the microblogging service was still planning to sell its shares for as little as $17 apiece,” said the paper.
Twitter has, however, resisted the temptation to sell more than the 70 million shares it had planned.
“But the final price seems bound to sharpen concerns about a company that’s never made a profit and whose business model still baffles many,” said the Mercury News.
In the same paper, a report said that a growing number of celebrities, athletes and self-promoters are “burnt out and signing off of Twitter. Many have gotten overwhelmed.”
Celebrities who at one time or another — have taken a break include everyone from Alec Baldwin to Miley Cyrus to “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof.
Twitter believes its user base of 232 million will continue to grow along with the 500 million tweets that are sent each day. The company’s revenue depends on ads it inserts into the stream of messages.
At its new price, Twitter’s valuation is more than $14.4 billion.
Even before the price was revealed , the mainstream and financial media had headlines such as “Don’t Chase Twitter’s IPO” and “Buzz builds over risks and (possible) rewards.”
Gartner analyst Brian Blau,however , was unconcerned .
“I still think they are taking the conservative, or call it a tempered, approach to their IPO,” he said. “I really feel that Twitter will be fine post-IPO, as long as they can solve some of their user-retention issues and continue to drive the ad business forward.”
Twitter primarily makes money by selling advertisers “promoted tweets” — mini-ads inserted into the flood of 140-character messages that make up a user’s Twitter feed.
When Facebook’s stock offering failed to take off, the tech IPO market virtually shut down for two months.
“Many small investors felt burned, especially those not versed in the ways of Wall Street,” said the Mercury News.
