Re:TWTR
by jonknee on Thursday November 07, 2013 @01:13PM
(#6691157)
Only a small percentage of TWTR shares were up for sale in the IPO--there are 544.70M total shares and just 70M were part of the IPO (a little less than 13%). Unless I missed something the shares sold in the IPO were issued, so for example if you were a VC with a million shares of TWTR you would still have a million shares of TWTR (now valued at $45M). The money from the sale will go to Twitter, not an investor. Twitter did "leave money on the table", but their #1 goal was not to pull a Facebook and have the IPO be DOA.
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Ahh now that's the sort of info I was hoping someone would reply with. So the shares that made up the IPO offering came from newly issued stock, not from existing share holders?
That makes it all a bit less cynical to me since all it means now is that the investors are worth more on paper. They still have to actually sell some of their shares at some point to realise any profit and presumably it's not easy for them to sell large quantities quickly (i.e. they're in this for the longish haul and thus far haven't covered their losses to date with actual bankable money)?
Would have been better in my book if they'd have waited until twitter at least turned a profit before going for the IPO but then I guess why wait if you're only plausible exit is IPOing and the banks are telling you the market will support it.