It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse for Twitter. But the stock is now trading below the price that Twitter sold shares for when it first went public.
#Ouch!
Twitter dipped under $26 for the first time ever on Thursday. Twitter priced its initial public offering at $26 in November 2013.
The stock was an immediate hit on Wall Street, surging 73% on its IPO day to just under $45. Twitter climbed as high as $74.73 by the end of December.
But it’s mostly downhill ever since.
Twitter has been plagued by concerns about sluggish user growth. Twitter has “only” 316 million monthly active users. Facebook has nearly 1.5 billion.
Former CEO Dick Costolo stepped down earlier this year. Many investors were not happy with how the company was doing under his watch.
Twitter has added many new features over the past year to try and lure new users. Periscope, an app which lets people show live video streams on Twitter, has been a hit. It launched in March and already has more than 10 million users.
Twitter’s stock also enjoyed a nice pop in mid-August after it announced a new content and advertising deal with the National Football League. Twitter is actively promoting itself as the social media place to be for live events.
But Twitter is still criticized for being intimidating to those not familiar with its 140-character message limit, endlessly scrolling timelines and trending topics.
Even Twitter co-founder and interim CEO Jack Dorsey has admitted that Twitter is not always easy to use.
Dorsey could wind up becoming the full-time CEO at Twitter. One influential Twitter investor, venture capitalist Chris Sacca, has endorsed him.
But Dorsey is also the CEO of private payments startup Square, which is reportedly looking to go public. Twitter has said it would prefer a full-time CEO.
There has been some talk that Twitter may want to hire an outsider for the CEO spot. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has been cited in some speculative reports as a dream candidate.
Others have suggested Twitter could go after Intel president Renee James, who announced in July that she plans to leave Intel in the next few months to try and become a CEO elsewhere.
Still, there’s a good chance that Twitter won’t want to shake things up too much. Adam Bain, Twitter’s head of revenue and partnerships has been cited as the frontrunner among internal candidates.
Bain arguably helped his chances with the new NFL deal.
Rumors about Twitter being taken over haven’t gone away though. Google is often mentioned as a possible suitor — and there was even more speculation after Google announced it was reorganizing into a new parent company called Alphabet.
Twitter’s stock even rallied earlier this summer following a fake media report about Twitter being in merger talks.