Twitter Surges in Trading Debut After $1.82 Billion Share Sale

Twitter almost doubled in its trading debut, as investors paid a premium for its promises of fast growth.

The shares rose as high as $50.09 and were trading at $45.49 at 12 p.m. in New York. The company sold 70 million shares at $26 in its initial public offering yesterday, raising $1.82 billion.

The microblogging service picked a price that valued it higher than rival Facebook Inc. (FB) and still drew more interest than anticipated. The San Francisco-based company, which is unprofitable and has one-fifth as many users as Facebook, is benefiting from investors’ thirst for companies that will grow quickly in expanding markets like mobile advertising.

“The company did everything to secure the most cash for itself while leaving some money for the IPO buyers,” said Josef Schuster, the founder of IPOX Schuster LLC, a Chicago-based manager of about $1.9 billion. “You need a pop at the opening to leave a good taste with everyone. They did a pretty good job managing the whole situation.”

At its opening price of $45.10, Twitter is valued at $24.6 billion, or 22 times estimated 2014 sales of $1.14 billion, according to analyst projections compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with 11.6 times that Facebook was trading at yesterday and LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD)’s 12.2 times sales.

Facebook and LinkedIn both fell more than 2 percent in today’s trading.