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ed welch wrote: It's just a company that's never made a profit.
..you're talking about a speculative market, one that cares little about value and all the more about perception. It matters little whether they're profitable; there's the prospect of a large internet-company going public, and prices "always" rise on the IPO.
Ask the average user; Twitter will be seen as "valuable". There's companies building complete marketingstrategies around it.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Quote: ed welch wrote:
It's just a company that's never made a profit.
Yes, but with all that $$ flowing in from the IPO they may be able to find a way to make a profit!  
Just because the code works, it doesn't mean that it is good code.
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Now seriously, what is the business model ? I can understand how facebook survives (ads and selling personal information), but ... twitter ?
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb
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It is working on selling fertilizer, once the current crop of tweets has had sufficient time in the digester....
The only instant messaging I do involves my middle finger.
English doesn't borrow from other languages.
English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
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Disclaimer: Information offered as an interested investor, not as a broker.
There's been a fair bit of analysis on this. For starters: Twitter Is Going Public. Here's How It Makes Money.[^] Basically, Twitter does sell ads, and it has been expanding into other social media which stand to improve the company's margins. Add in the fact that while Twitter will probably never make a lot of money, its revenue stream is expected to be quite steady.
Added: A better and more recent analysis. How does Twitter make money?[^]
modified 7-Nov-13 9:58am.
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You (resp. the article) almost convinced me. Thanks, good read !
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Do not feed the troll ! - Common proverb
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I have an order to buy 35 shares, with a limit of $35 USD. I should be able to get it, but it probably will not start trading until 10 am Eastern Time.
Ah, the advantages of working for a brokerage firm 
Added: Alas, it looks like I was bypassed: the stock hasn't started trading yet, but bids are piling up to as high as $48 a share. Oh, well.
modified 7-Nov-13 10:10am.
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so, the underwriters made a killing
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ed welch wrote:
so, the underwriters made a killing
Yup, that's how an IPO works: the corporation raises its money by selling shares to the underwriters, and the underwriters make -- or lose -- a lot of money by selling those shares on the open market.
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I don't think they ever lose though.
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Oh, it happens. A good example is the IPO of Vonage in May, 2006. Rather than sell its initial offering on the open market, the corporation offered its stock to current subscribers via a special website. Because of a technical snafu, most of the customers were told their sales hadn't gone through. By the time things had gotten straightened out a week later and the customers had been notified that the sales had gone through -- often with the customer trying several times to make the purchase and thus making several purchases -- the price had dropped from the initial $17 to $11.80. There was a huge class action lawsuit with both the corporation and its underwriters lost a huge chunk of money.
A lot of other internet and tech stocks went the same way. The online pet supply store, Pets.com, for example: its share price was $14 when it started trading in February, 2000 and had fallen to 22 cents when the company went out of business nine months later. The underwriters lost their shirt, their shoes, their socks and their belt.
One of the worst recent IPOs was the biotech firm Omeros. It's based in Seattle, so the flop got a lot of local coverage. It went public on October 7, 2009 at $10 a share; a month later, it had lost almost half its value. It seems the underwriters had missed the fact that a federal investigation was gearing up to look at charges that the company had been lying on its reports to the National Institutes for Health.
It doesn't happen often, granted: that's because the underwriters are so incredibly cautious when doing their due diligence. They, quite literally, are betting the firm that the IPO is worth at least what they say it is worth. It is much more common for underwriters to back out of the deal if it looks fishy and just write off the resources used to do the research than to end up going bankrupt.
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I tried to put an order today in my brokerageaccount, but it didn't know what that symbol meant. I'm not sure if its protecting me from doing something stupid. I figured I could get them at opening and hold on for a month and let them go as the hype builds.
Personally, I want nothing to do with Twitter, but I'll certainly try to make a buck off of them!
Hogan
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From the news:
Twitter at $14.1 billion, with the potential to reach $14.4 billion if underwriters exercise an overallotment option.
If the full overallotment is exercised, as expected, Twitter could raise $2.1 billion, making it the ...
If twitter sells all of the stock at IPO it will have only have raised $2.1 billion that means that the true investors, the ones that made twitter work, will walk with billions.
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It doesn't quite work that way. The money being raised goes to the company, which has plans to use it for acquiring new tech and developing new revenue streams.
Private shared held before the IPO will be converted to public shares; in effect, the founders and workers will have their sweat equity monetized. They stand to become very rich, on paper. They won't actually see any money until they sell those shares, and any substantial sell-off requires that the shareholder file a notice of intent with regulators. To my knowledge, there are no such filings. Twitter may decide at some point to pay dividends, which is a distribution of profit. That requires that there be profit first, though.
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I am just copying what the news paper said. If the IPO nets 14 billion and the company gets 2.1 billion then ... but then I am not a stock market gambler so I don't really know. Other than a Gov't shutdown in January will Bankrupt Tesla because of the Government Panasonic Deal. I am writing my congress person now, demanding a balanced budget! While buying options : )
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Ah, ok, I can see where the confusion comes in. So some IPO 101....
A private corporation decides to go public. There is a large number of ducks that have to be lined up before it can happen: documents must be filed with regulators, disclosures must be made, and a firm (or more often, a conglomerate of firms) must be found to underwrite it.
The underwriters go through an extensive process of due diligence, vetting the corporation and making sure that it is worth their time and risk. The focus of this is to set the initial offering price, which (in theory) balances what the underwriters believe the company is worth with the riskiness of the company's business model and prospects for profitability. The underwriters, in consultation with the corporation, will decide how many shares will be printed and how many of those shares will be put on the market. Usually, one or more of the underwriting firms agrees to be a market maker, guaranteeing the liquidity of the stock by promising always to buy and sell the shares; rarely, though, the underwriters will bring in a non-underwriting firm to be the market maker. A stock exchange is hired to list the stock, a stock symbol is decided, and the date of the IPO is set. All of these decisions come with separate filings with regulators, which is public information available to potential investors.
The day before the IPO, the underwriters announce their final initial offering price. If the corporation agrees to the price, they will sell their public shares to the underwriters at that price. Once this principle sale is finished, the corporation has made all the money it will see from the IPO itself. Usually, only a fraction of the total shares will be offered at the IPO, with the rest being held by the corporation for other use, such as employee stock options or just as an investment in itself.
The underwriters keep some of the shares in reserve, either as their own investment in the company or as a required reserve as the market maker. The remaining shares are put up for public sale. When the exchange opens, it begins tracking bids to buy the stock. When enough bids have been submitted, the underwriters begin to sell their supply. At that point, the stock is free floating, with price set by market demands. They hope that the stock will sell higher than the initial price, which is how they make their money after all this work; if the stock sells lower, then they will have a big loss to swallow.
With regards to Twitter, the company made about $2.1 billion when they sold their public shares to the underwriters. Again, that is all the money they will see off the IPO. The estimated $14 billion would be the value of the total deal, with $2.1 billion going to the corporation and the rest going to the underwriters.
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ed welch wrote: What could possibly go wrong?
You could misspell "plunge". 
/ravi
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ed welch wrote: What could possibly go wrong?
Two words: Dot-com bubble
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Merely an opportunity for the creator's to cash out, and leave the public holding on to someone's thesis project. A mindless noise machine where everyone can hear and smell each other fart in near real-time?
David
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In regard to the retirement joke.[^]
Result:
When asked for the report the victim dropped his chin to his chest and said very slowly, "I... just... threw... out... that... report"
We had a good laugh.
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I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Bad guy!
Veni, vidi, vici.
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How long was everyone else able to keep a strait face and avoid tipping him off?
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Not long.
Everyone was pretty anxious to point the finger at me.
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... and how long will you be in hospital?
speramus in juniperus
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