It was no surprise to see Twitter’s IPO ‘jump’ from the initial price of $26 per share to a high of $50 before falling slightly to $44.90 yesterday.
The founders now have billion dollar stakes in the firm but the expert analysis is more sceptical of the health of a company still not making a profit after seven years’ rapid growth.
Peter Garnry, equity strategy chief at Saxo Bank, praised the markets for funneling capital to the expanding business, before slamming the IPO.
"These tech IPOs have become like a videogame cheered by ordinary people and the media," he snarled.
"The valuation at these price levels is disconnected from any logical calculation and reflects a huge downside risk for investors if Twitter does not meet expectations."
He then called the flotation the beginning of a "nerve wracking journey" for investors – the question being whether Twitter can meet the huge expectations created by such a large stock market debut.
IG analyst Brenda Kelly also questioned the reliability of the mobile advertising model (Twitter is 85% funded by such income), saying: "Given its active user base the company does have great profit-making potential, but monetising this potential is a different story."
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And Twitter itself outlined risks to its wellbeing in its October filing, identifying one potential stumbling block as the possibility that people just stop using the site, which is what happened to MySpace when Facebook emerged.
So far, all the cash Twitter has generated through becoming a publicly-traded company is based on expectation. Expectation that it will continue to grow. That it can monetise its popularity. That advertisers will see their revenues rise accordingly.
Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research, claims the $45 share price could be justified with an annual revenue of $6bn by 2018 – something he says seems "overly optimistic".
With the rise of social media, whole economies are being driven by something wholly illusory, based on whimsical public perception of ‘cool’ and the wavering predictions of people trusted to get it right.
As collaboration software provider Concrete Platform’s CEO, Tristan Rogers, sums up: "How attached in future hundreds of millions of users will be to their 140-character meanderings is the billion dollar question."
