The bird is finally leaving the nest.
Twitter announced late Thursday that it has filed a confidential S-1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission for its IPO, capping off years of rumors about whether Twitter would ever go public.
See also: How Facebook Has Changed Since Going Public 1 Year Ago
"The only reason they are doing it this way is to probably manage expectations," Santosh Rao, an analyst with Greencrest Capital, told Mashable, referring to the tremendous amount of hype surrounding the Facebook IPO. "They don't want too much press."
The company's decision to publicly announce the IPO lays to rest questions about its intentions to go public, but its decision to file a stealth S-1 effectively raises many more, chief among them: how much revenue does Twitter generate, what will Twitter price its shares at and how much is the company actually worth.
According to Rao, Twitter is currently trading at around $18-$19 on the private market and he expects that it will price slightly higher than that when it does go public, thanks in part to growing confidence in Facebook and the Internet IPO market in general.
"I would think that given the whole momentum behind them, a good stock market, overall positive sentiment with Facebook, [they will price in the] low-to-mid 20's per share," Rao told Mashable. He expects the company's overall valuation to be between $10.5 billion to $11 billion.
That estimate, while a bit lower than other reports Thursday, is roughly in line with previous estimates leading up to the IPO. Bloomberg reported in May that Twitter was valued at $10 billion based on an investment from GSV Capital.
As for how much revenue Twitter generates, the stealth S-1 does provide at least one clue. Twitter took advantage of the JOBS Act passed last year which allows "emerging growth companies" to file for IPO without disclosing their finances until three weeks before the company's leadership start making their presentations to investors and analysts (an event known as the road show.) In order to qualify for this tactic, a company must make less than $1 billion in revenue in the most recent fiscal year.
In fact, recent reports suggest Twitter is well below the $1 billion mark. eMarketer estimates that Twitter will generate about $583 million in global ad revenue in 2013 and close in on the $1 billion mark next year. Rao seconds this estimate and puts Twitter's revenues at between $500-$600 million for 2013.
"They've been on a strong trajectory, particularly as Twitter has very shrewdly looked to mobile as its meal ticket and were able to capitalize as users shift from desktop to mobile," Clark Fredricksen, VP of communications eMarketer, told Mashable. "They're still small next to Facebook, but they have developed a pitch to advertisers that has gotten traction."
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