Today Twitter priced its IPO at $26 per share. At that price, the company will raise $1.82 billion from the public markets, and be valued at $14.16 billion, based on a non-diluted share count, and $18.33 billion based on a diluted count. Here’s a fun statistic: The value of the stock held by Twitter’s executive staff and directors is now worth $3.24 billion.
Currently, that group holds 124,529,741 shares in the company, or 25.5% of the company. After the IPO, and 70 million shares are sold to the general public, the group will control 22.3% of the company.
Evan Williams, who owns the most shares of the group will see his stake fall to 10.4%, but don’t feel sorry for the guy – his 56,909,847 shares are worth $1.48 billion. In second place among the leadership cadre is Peter Fenton, with beneficial ownership of 31,568,740 worth $820 million. Current CEO Dick Costolo has $199.6 million in Twitter stock, while Dorsey has $609 million.
Outside of the leadership, external investors are now rich, and almost liquid. Rizvi Traverse controls $2.21 billion in Twitter stock, J.P. Morgan $1.27 billion, Spark Capital $843 million, and Benchmark Capital $820 million.
Twitter’s initial public offering saw its price rise, as demand the modest 70 million offered shares was more enthusiastic than what was perhaps anticipated by Twitter. Hoped for, certainly, but expected, perhaps not.
A final statistic: According to its filed S-1, existing stockholders of Twitter paid on average $2.21 for the company’s stock over the life of the company. The public has to pay the IPO gate rate. In a nutshell, that’s the VC game.
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