Twitter Assigned A ‘Buy’ Before IPO Launch

Twitter Inc stock was assigned “buy” rating even before it got listed on any exchange. SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Robert Peck said that the price of the stock is expected to rise two folds in the first year of the IPO issue, says Reuters.

Mobile users are backbone

The analyst added that Twitter can trade between $28 and $30 per share and can even touch $50 within a year. Twitter is a micro-blogging site where the users can post upto 140 character message called “tweets “related to anything..

“It is important for investors to look at Twitter beyond just a 140 character text,” Peck wrote in a 76-page note.

Peck believes that E-commerce and mobile apps can also prove beneficial for Twitter as around three-fourth of active monthly users of Twitter are mobile users.

As of now, there is no revelation from Twitter as to how many shares will be offered and at what price. Peck has estimated 50 million shares raising up to $1.5 billion. In a filing, Twitter noted that there were 472.6 million shares of common stock outstanding and no preferred stocks were outstanding as of June 30.

Twitter capable of enhancing ad revenues

Twitter’s offering is the most talked about issue after Facebook’s IPO. This micro-blogging site has posted losses over the past three years, but is confident enough to attract the investors with the shimmer of its advertisement revenue growth. Advertisement contributed around 87 percent to twitter’s revenue in 2010 first half.

Further, the analyst noted that advertising revenues will go up as Twitter recently acquired online mobile ad exchange MoPub to give competition to Google’s Double Click. Also, Twitters advertising partnership with broadcasters will boost the revenues.

Twitter can grab the opportunity of showing video clips and ads through tweets coordinated with the content of TV, which will give it space into the $200 billion global TV market, according to analyst Peck.

Also, Twitter has got ample opportunity to enhance its search capability with a product much like Google’s AdWords. For Ad words Google receives fees from the advertisers based on the number of clicks.

Peck is confident on the contribution from new feature ‘Keyword targeting,’ which was launched in April. Peck has received four out of five stars for the precision of his recommendations on Internet companies by Thomson Reuters StarMine.