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Tech

Twitter may look to double IPO to $2B

By
Mark DeCambre and
Garett Sloane
Published Oct. 5, 2013, 12:04 a.m. ET

Now this is operation fast and furious.

Twitter is racing toward the year’s most eagerly awaited stock market debut with plans to start its roadshow for prospective investors in New York at the end of this month, The Post has learned.

That would put the microblogging service — the hottest name to hit the IPO circuit since Facebook in May 2012 — on track for its public market debut as early as Nov. 8.

If the roadshow goes smoothly, Twitter execs are entertaining the idea of more than doubling the size of the planned share sale to $2 billion as the IPO enters the final stages, according to sources.

Twitter publicly filed its IPO documents on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, using $1 billion as a placeholder.

Despite the hype, Twitter CFO Mike Gupta and other execs leading the IPO want to stress that the 140-character tweeting phenomenon is more than a flash in the pan.

Twitter doesn’t want to be seen as another Facebook and plans to go out of its way to differentiate its business from thoset of rivals. Indeed, the company steered clear of the social media label in its IPO filing, billing itself as a “platform for public expression and conversation in real time.”

The characterization is one that Twitter thinks can woo advertising dollars from companies aiming to garner instant gratification in exchange for ad investments.

The company also plans to portray itself as an emerging growth company with tremendous upside.

Twitter wants to dodge some of the issues that hurt Facebook and will boast that it has a better handle on the mobile ad market, with 75 percent of its revenues derived from smartphones and tablets.

Revenue from advertising and data licensing increased 304 percent, to $139 million this year, compared with the six-month period ended June 2012.

Big institutional investors such as pension funds and mutual fund investors may have other concerns.

For example, Twitter is pushing international expansion, which, according to Sam Hamadeh, the CEO of IPO data firm Privco, may prove costly for the company.

Twitter’s ad revenue per timeline view — one of the key metrics it uses to evaluate its own business — was 31 cents on an international basis compared to $2.60 in the US.

Overall expenses also have jumped 230 percent, from $95 million in 2010, to $316 million in the first six months of 2013, as the company grows.

Server costs alone represent 24 percent of revenues, according to Hamadeh.

“When I saw those numbers in their [public filings], I felt like a father looking for straight A’s but finding D’s,” Hamadeh said.