Before that happens, Twitter will publish, in a series of public SEC filings, in-depth information about its business.
All this information will help investors figure out whether or not Twitter is a healthy company worth investing in. We'll learn how much money it brings it, how it spends its money, and how much it is profiting, if it at all. We'll learn if those numbers are shrinking or growing, and how fast.
Not everyone is waiting to get all that information before placing their bets.
Frank Mazzola is a man who wants to make money off these kinds of speculators.
Mazzola runs a Wall Street firm called Felix Advisors. Felix raises funds from "accredited investors," (people who make $200,000+/year) and uses the money to buy stock in private companies.
Last Friday, Mazzola sent out an email pushing a Twitter fund on his clients.
The email pushes hard.
In it, Mazzola says he is selling Twitter at $31/share, valuing the entire company at about $16 billion.
(Judging from other reports, Twitter's share count is about 530 million.)
Then he writes Twitter "will be in my opinion a $30+ billion company day one and $100+ billion company in the not so distant future."
He says, "Opportunities like this do not come around every day so we are pounding the table."
Then Mazzola says his clients should also look into buying stock in several other companies: Bloom Energy, Palantir, ZocDoc, Badgeville and oDesk.
"They are must own opportunities in my opinion and they also have a very limited shelf life in that we do not have much stock and we expect major events for all of them in the short-term."
Keep in mind, neither Mazzola nor his clients have any on-the-record data from any of those companies about how their businesses are performing.
What could go wrong?
People could lose a lot of money, is what. Many investors in pre-IPO
Over the phone, we told Mazzola it seems a little sketchy to us that he's telling potential investors Twitter is going to double (or more than double) it's valuation - without having any real information to back that up.
"That's my opinion," Mazzola responded.
He noted that Business Insider has "beat him" over this kind of thing for some time now.
He said, "in Facebook our investors did incredibly well. In LinkedIn our investors did incredibly well. One day someone's going to write that we make our clients a lot of money. There's a reason our business continues to grow."
Here's the email:
From: Mazzola Frank
Date: Friday, September 13, 2013
Subject: With a tweet, Twitter kicks off next big tech IPO
To:
With a tweet, Twitter kicks off next big tech IPO
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/12/twitter-ipo-filing/2806703/
Needless to say I feel like I just hit the lottery I have so many friends which I never knew I had before twitter's filing. They are obviously all begging for whatever twitter stock they can get and for good reason. We have stock at $31 that I am offering out to investors. Whatever is left at the end of the day we are buying for ourselves. This will be in my opinion a $30+ billion company day one and $100+ billion company in the not so distant future. Opportunities like this do not come around every day so we are pounding the table which we have been for some time telling our investors to take advantage of it as we intend to do so ourselves.
The same goes for Bloom Energy, Palantir, ZocDoc, Badgeville and oDesk. They are must own opportunities in my opinion and they also have a very limited shelf life in that we do not have much stock and we expect major events for all of them in the short-term. As I have said numerous times we are in the middle of one of the most prolific times in history to be investing. Fortunes will be made and lives changed if you believe and act. We have access to the hottest companies all of which in my opinion are the next big thing.
If you are interested in twitter or any other of our opportunities I mentioned let us know.
Best,
Frank