Square IPO Today at 2.9 Billion Dollars.....

Square will start trading today on the NYSE at 9 usd per share, on opening. This gives it a valuation of 2.9 Billion usd.

It's the Jack Dorsey company, or was, now that he's back at Twitter.

It lost 54 million usd in Q3 2015, a higher loss y-o-y and they've yet to make a profit, although that doesn't really bother us. But the valuation does.

It's a mobile payments company (www.squareup.com) largely at retail point-of-sale for Small businesses. Big deal - we've seen a 100 of these types of companies. 

So what's getting Square the profile and huge valuation? 

The presence of Jack Dorsey. And if you want a view....that's 2.9 BILLION of madness.....enough already.

UPDATE - It opened today at 11 Dollars 20 Cents. Range was 11-13 Dollars but priced at 9 Dollars. So this is real positive. Still makes no sense though....but remember, it has to CLOSE over 9 Dollars. 

Go Daddy goes up 31%.

GoDaddy, the do-it-all domain registration/web hosting/web authoring/web anything service shares surged +31% on their IPO this week.

Priced pre-IPO at 20 dollars (higher than the 17/18 Dollars expected in itself), the first day of trading saw the company value jump to a stunning circa 6 Billion usd.

22 million shares were offered.

It's 18 years old, unprofitable and with what has been described as a "mountain of debt" but famous for its racy Superbowl commercials. However, it did go through a management shake out a couple of years ago....

Still the market obviously likes it but you'll often find a first day trading boost which diminishes as traders take same day profits. 

Good for Go Daddy.
Good for Digital.

Not a good week for Twitter at all. Shares tank, Users stagnate, confidence disappears. But it's not all bad...

It's been a tough old week for Twitter.

In its first filings to Wall Street since their IPO, things have gone downhill. Investors are worried.

Twitter's US growth has largely stagnated and international growth is up 8 million users on the same yoy period. Small enough. 

Now with 187 m users internationally and 54m in the US, giving it 241m overall in Quarter 4 2013. In Quarter 3, that was 232m, so that's the worry because it's a small increase and USA stagnated. 

US Advertisers account for over 70% of Twitters revenue.

And it's all impacting on the share price.

Early stage poor growth like this, is really considered badly with the shares down circa -25% on the week. That's a massive offload.

It is only one quarter of data, and revenue in 2013 was 665 million usd, up from 317 million or +110% and EBITDA was up +256%. But these numbers never got a look in, so in some ways, the dissemination of information didn't help. 

Twitter still has a large advertising reach and it's still growing its users and its revenue. But the fluid typical ipo investors, may continue to depart and that's a problem.

IPO investors tend to be more 'punters' and get frightened easily. 

That's not good news for Twitter but it's likely that some maturity will come into the market in time....if that is, investors are prepared to wait. 

Twitter debuts on NYSE today at the high 26 Dollars a share.

The Twitter IPO starts on NYSE today.

Trading will take place starting at 26 us Dollars a share which is at the top end. But as predicted, it's being talked up and up to allow early investors turn a profit. One spread betting company IG, today in The Guardian, are predicting a +70% rise to 43 usd......

In the words of Mandy Rice Davies, well they would, wouldn't they.

Everybody is bullish so a gain is the most likely outcome here today.
It will be the 3rd largest IPO this year but the average one day rise (or 'pop') this year is +17%.

So there's a play on the day but after that....remember Facebook.
There's a lot of bulls out there looking for a quick gain.

UPDATE NOVEMBER 7th - Early trading, shares to go to high of 50 Dollars, drop back to circa 45 Dollars. Huge gains on the day circa +75%. IG were right) 

Big Wall Street pre-IPO interest in Twitter's IPO. Expect the market manipulation that follows.

Twitter's pre-IPO shares are already oversubscribed as their investor roadshows come to an end.

So it has attracted really strong Wall Street investor interest before it goes public in November (7th?). Which probably shows, as everyone said at the time, that the shares were underpriced (deliberately?) at 17-20 usd a share and selling 70 million of them, raising about a billion usd. 

So all this means is that stockbrokers and investors see an opportunity to make money from Twitter, for themselves.

Those Stockbrokers (supposedly on behalf of clients, but they're not) that have committed to the stock from Wall Street, will now start sending out 'buy' recommendations, wait and see, to cover their own position. You're also hearing reports from Wall Street of potential upsides of +45% and target pricing of 29 dollars. Real positive PR follows pre-IPO activity like this to boost the price.

What they're doing, is convincing people to buy and thereby inflating the price and thereby making a profit for themselves. They'll talk it up. Watch it.

It's market manipulation, that's all, as they try to stir up enough interest to give themselves a gain. These boys will be offloading asap - same day probably - whilst encouraging longer term stayers - like you.

So now Twitter will probably price itself at the higher end of the 20 Dollar range and/or sell more than 70 million shares. So the pre-IPO investors will get an immediate return on opening day. 

If you don't understand the market and the way it is constantly manipulated, stay a millions miles away. These people make money off your lack of knowledge and they actually call you 'mugs'. They are in it for themselves.

Either way, it looks like a real 'dot com' IPO. Already showing this level of interest, means it's going upwards on the day. But for how long? 

Or it's another complete Facebook IPO sham.

(UPDATE - Twitter shares will be priced between 23 and 25 Dollars when it floats on the NYSE next Thursday) 

Twitter's row with LinkedIn is about Ad money. And an IPO. Tweeters might not be happy.

There's a lot going on it seems at Twitter, launched by Jack Dorsey below in his first Tweet above, July 2006. You'll note it was called 'Twttr' then a reference at the time to 'Flickr' (2004).

This is a story of a good Social network that is a real success but that now wants to make big money following on from the Facebook IPO. In doing that, they could lose their very essence. Is there an issue with making money? Yes, if it screws up the whole plan.


Recently ending its syndication deal with LinkedIn, meant that tweets no longer show up on LinkedIn pages - and LinkedIn is the poorer for it as its pages start to look sparse. It's the start of Twitter ending their relationships with third parties. Money is at the core of this because Twitters revenue has not been exactly spectacular as we're discovering.


Twitter (over 500 million users today) makes much of its revenue from Ads (according to Forbes, about 260 million usd last year) although is thought to have made a loss in 2010. A loss two years ago.

And from The Wall Street Journal Twitters revenue was even less than the Forbes estimate "Now Twitter is striving to mature its business to be fit for an IPO and finding it has a long way to go. Twitter's ad revenue reached $139.5 million last year, eMarketer Inc. estimates, while ad revenue at Facebook which is two years older than Twitter—was 22 times larger at $3.15 billion."

Not good either way. Shockingly bad actually.


Revenue is as always, based on advertising to eyeballs. So when third parties like LinkedIn, channel tweets onto their own platform, Twitter loses those eyeballs and the Ad dollars that go with it.

So what Twitter is trying to do is to bring those eyeballs back to their own site and therefore, "monetise" them by making more money through Ads. Forcing people to view the ads on Twitter alone. In doing that and creating higher revenues, it's getting ready for an IPO.


Interestingly too, about 80% of its traffic is via mobile, highly lucrative.

Rumours abound that Twitter is to do the same and cut-off Facebook shortly and a general "clamp down" on third party apps. GetGlue could be one in the firing line I'd guess.


From a Twitter point of view, it makes money sense and a precursor I'm sure, to an impending IPO with a value estimated at just under 9 billion usd. It has already raised more than 1 billion usd in venture funding so whilst that's fine, they'll want to see their money back sometime soon. An IPO is one way to do it. Money, money, money.

Rumours also abound that Twitter is about to acquire Sense networks next month, a mobile analytics company, that provides their data for, you've guessed it, advertising. They use mobile location data and behavioural data to fine-tune ad targeting. So local advertising is on offer here by geo location. It would be Twitter's sixth acquisition this year but interestingly in the Ad space.

Roll in the audience, give them more ads, and make more money for yourself. But from a customer experience it may not be so good. After all, customers want their tweets integrated to Linkedin/Facebook and others. It's much easier and spreads the word faster.

Recent changes on Twitter include website redesign, photo sharing in 2011, privacy updates (always comes with a warning because mostly it allows them to share more of your data), logo updates on June 5 which all sounded very "corporate" and in particular, improvements on their Search, long overdue.

So Twitter is turning into its own social network (it's the number 1 Social Media site in Japan, ahead of Facebook) but with only 140 characters, which is Not a Facebook. And opening up the possibility of a new "me too" SMS service which does integrate. 


Add to that alienating the whole world of developers who've helped get Twitter to where they are - and they're not happy about it. Not one bit and boy are they blogging about it. Twitter would do well to remember how quickly things can turn against you and the bottom line is that the internet is an "open" network not a closed one. 


It could be viewed that in an ambition to generate more revenue before an IPO, customers are being squeezed. Despite this quote "I'm never going to optimise for short-term revenue at the expense of user experience", said Twitter non-founding CEO Costolo recently, at a Wired Conference in NYC. 


He took over when the three Twitter founders departed although founder Jack Dorsey returned in March 2011 with whom he says he "works well". Jack Dorsey (media person of the year at Cannes 2012) seems to spend a lot of his time though, with his other venture, Square. So why did he come back? Optics?

There's a dramatic push on at Twitter to start making some money and in advance of an IPO (or indeed a Google trade sale?). It might be some way off just now, but it's coming. An IPO to make money for the Twitter shareholders possibly to the detriment of Twitter itself.

The question will be whether the changes and new money-making attitude will have a detrimental affect, notably on users, who are the very reason Twitter exists. In a Boardroom, a drive to make money might rule customer principles. I've seen it before and certainly these changes reduces the profile of Twitter on third party apps like Linkedin.

If it does alienate users, it will all have been for nothing.
Especially, and ironically, if an IPO is on the cards.
The 'P' in IPO stands for Public.


One hopes its NASDAQ ticket won't be TWIT.

Facebook to leave Nasdaq probably. A tsunami IPO if ever there was one.

The Facebook IPO seems to have been a real watershed for everyone but now it has enveloped Nasdaq. 


If you recall, the IPO opening was delayed by technology glitches (ironic or wha?) on the exchange which meant that brokers weren't able to determine what was traded and what was not. Really a very poor show, which resulted in Nasdaq now offering some of those brokers secret compensation (millions of dollars) and it has also resulted in some of those brokers taking class actions against Nasdaq.


Now apart from the money involved, here we have a situation where your clients are suing you. The Brokers, on whom Nasdaq depends, are disgruntled to say the least and are suing Nasdaq. So when you get your clients suing you, things aren't looking good for the future.


But it all got worse over the weekend. It would seem that given all of the issues, Facebook are considering moving off the Nasdaq Exchange. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a hammer blow.


Nasdaq (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated quotations) is the 2nd largest exchange after The New York Stock Exchange. It is owned by a private financial services corporation based in NYC, that own a number of other exchanges. Started in 1971 replacing the old "OTC" system, it was the first exchange to start trading online and consequently, very quickly, became the darling of internet companies and most notably in the first bubble.


Famously of course, its former non-executive chairman was Bernie Madoff and one time being the largest market maker on Nasdaq. Madoff started with 5,000 usd from working as a lifeguard and sprinkler installer.


When we (via net works)  floated on Nasdaq in March of 2000, there were 23 other companies floating the same day, so you get its popularity. Hence it was almost the obvious choice for Facebook.


And now that Facebook are thinking of going, it's going to take some of the tech sheen away from Nasdaq coupled with the ongoing damage that the IPO has done to the exchange. If you were going to IPO tomorrow, would you be thinking Nasdaq?


The Facebook IPO has been a tsunami. And the shock waves will be felt for a time yet. 


The SEC investigation into insider dealing has tarnished Wall Street and given the convictions on Friday, some will be shaking in their fine leather shoes.


The Facebook price collapse has tarnished Facebook in what some see as young brat billionaires showing distain for regular investors. 


And it already has reduced the stock price of many other tech companies who won't be sending Facebook Christmas Cards this year.


Not a good picture all round.
Not good for the Social space at all.