Twitter saw hefty demand for its stock on the opening day of its trading as TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange, opening at $45.10, much higher than its IPO price of $26 set on November 6th. It traded as high as $50 before closing at $44.90.
The closing price represented a 73% gain over the IPO price of $26, with about 117 million shares being traded, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The gains occurred on a day when the overall market fell, with the Dow dropping about 1%. Facebook, Netflix and other tech stocks also fell.
The share prices were higher than expected and prompted some analysts to downgrade the stock to a sell rating.
"At a price in the high 20s or low 30s,... Twitter would be fairly valued," wrote Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, in a note issued on November 7th. "However, with a price that pushes into the high 30s and beyond, Twitter is simply too expensive. At a $45 price level (the stock opened at $45.10), the enterprise value is approximately $30bn ... or almost the same valuation as Discovery Communications, and nearly the same valuation as CBS or the combined Publicis Omnicom Group...or even Yahoo."
