Twitter's board is meeting today to discuss the future of the company including the possibility of putting the firm on a sale or cutting down on parts of its business. But is anyone interested in buying Twitter?
CNBC reported that Twitter's (NYSE: Twitter [TWTR]) CEO Jack Dorsey, who is back managing the company for a little over a year now, is faced with serious challenges as the company is going through the one of its hardest periods. The experts say that Dorsey might only have a few quarters to change the situation and prove himself in the role. Meanwhile, the rumours about Twitter being open for a buyout are intensifying.
These rumours have been going around for quite some time. Finally, Twitter's management board is meeting later today to discuss, among other topics, the possibility of putting the company on sale, as investors are losing patience. Yet only last week, Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter, told Bloomberg that the board will need to "consider the right options" when asked about the company's status. Williams' statement triggered Twitter shares to grow by 6% only to fall back again.
Twitter's stock has declined over 29% in the past year and is continuously trading at way lower levels than its initial IPO price of $25.94. As of writing, TWTR stock is at $19.00. It looks like the only thing that can help TWTR to grow again is a new portion of rumours about the possible buyout.
CNBC said that Twitter doesn't have that many options left apart from putting itself for sale, except for doing a major layoff or selling some parts of its business such as MoPub or Vine that were previously acquired by Twitter.
However, even if Twitter decides to sell itself there might be a problem with finding an interested customer. Even though there are some (rumoured) potential customers among such giants as Google (NASDAQ: Alphabet Class A [GOOGL]), Microsoft (NASDAQ: Microsoft Corporation [MSFT]) or even Apple (NASDAQ: Apple [AAPL]), the analysts say that Twitter's ambitious price tag can scare them away. Supposedly, the company asks for an $18 billion compensation, yet its unimpressive profits do not justify the high price for the buyers.
Add to that the growing success of Twitter's rival, Snapchat, that is about to file for an IPO. Yesterday, The Inc. reported that Snapchat is in advanced talks with bankers regarding its upcoming IPO that is expected to happen as early as the end of this year or the beginning of 2017. This is another thing Twitter should be worried about as Snapchat is currently capturing over 31% of American social media users and is very close to leaving Twitter behind. In this case, Snapchat would become the 3rd biggest social media network after Facebook and Instagram. What is left for Twitter then?