One Chart That Shows How Much Crazier The Facebook IPO Was Than The Twitter IPO

Twitter went public today.

Many comparisons were drawn to the Facebook IPO last year, which went nowhere near as smoothly.

Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak, provides a visual representation in the chart at right of just how much crazier the Facebook IPO was.

In a note to clients, he writes:

The sale of $1.82 billion worth of Twitter through 70 million of its shares valued the entity at $26.2 billion following an 80% surge in buying interest. The chart below compares the value traded during IPO day for Twitter and Facebook during its botched May 2012 offering. Each bubble represents the dollar value traded during each 60-minute time bucket, and the bigger the bubble, the greater is the value. Facebook sold almost nine-times as much stock at the time than has Twitter today when it offered $16 billion in shares at $38.00 apiece.

Perhaps owing to the delayed start to trading due to a system-crash at the Nasdaq stock exchange, Facebook saw 276mm shares valued at $11.5 billion trade in its first 60 minutes of trading. Twitter saw 63mm shares valued at $2.8 billion trade in the opening hour. While Twitter certainly captured both institutional and retail imagination with its launch today, the smoother sailing on the New York Stock Exchange has allowed for improved digestion. During the second hour of trading the value of trades crossing the exchange approached a peak of 30% to the level seen by Facebook during its second hour of trading. Since that point comparable volumes have slackened off to just 13% by 2:30pm.

Twitter closed today at $44.90, 72.7% above its opening price of $26 per share.