UPDATE: Twitter's price per share opened this morning at $45.10, up 73 percent from its original $26. Based on Twitter's opening share price, the Crashlytics deal can now be valued at around $259.5 million.
At around 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening, Twitter announced via a company tweet that it had priced its initial public offering of 70,000,000 shares at $26 a share – an increase from the initial estimate of 23-25 dollars.
The IPO gives local venture capital firm Spark Capital a stake of around $843 million, reported the Boston Business Journal. Also poised to hugely profit from the company's offering is Crashlytics – one of three Boston area startups, including Bluefin Labs and Spindle, acquired by Twitter in the last year.
Spark Capital holds the largest stake in the now-public company among its investors. Spark Capital participated in Twitter’s $15 million Series B round a year later, and continued to invest in the company’s $35 million Series C and $100 million Series D rounds. General partner Bijan Sabet, who led Spark's investment in Twitter, also served on the company's Board of Directors from 2008 till 2011.
Spark's $843 million return far surpasses the value of its most recent fund, which was closed in February 2013 and is worth $450 million.
The local VC has already generated proceeds from two secondary sales of Twitter stock already, according to Fortune's Dan Primack. Wrote Primack:
And this doesn't even account for the fact that both Spark and USV each did two secondary share sales. Twitter doesn't break these out in its IPO documents (which is unusual) but, for example, it's known that Spark owned 15% after its 2008 deal and invested inseveral subsequent rounds (again, its current stake is just 6.8%). Chances are that each firm may have already returned the fund on those sales, meaning that what comes in the IPO is just gravy...
BostInno reported back in September that when Twitter's valuation went public, companies acquired by Twitter in the past year saw a 50 percent increase in their respective valuations, which meant that Twitter's 100 or so Boston-based employees (with stock options) would be making even more off of Twitter's IPO.
Cambridge-based Crashlytics sold to Twitter in January for a little over $100 million in a mix of stock and cash. Given the 50 percent increase in Twitter's valuation, BostInno stated that the deal could be valued at $150 million.
Sources close to the deal confirmed today that the company was indeed now valued at $150 million.
Twitter bought up Bluefin Labs in February for $80 million in an all stock deal, then layed off a third of the Cambridge startup's staff. Bluefin employees holding stock options will be coming into more cash from Twitter's IPO. That deal can now be estimated at around $120 million.
Twitter shareholders cannot sell their shares until the end of a 180-day lockup period that ensues the IPO. The IPO shares, under the symbol TWTR, began trading Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange.
Image courtesy of New York Daily News
