Bernstein Considers Twitter's 'Lurker' Users, Sees Shares As 'Fairly Valued'

Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR) shares are up more than 15 percent over the last two trading sessions and up nearly 30 percent from the lows set on November 25th. The stock hit a fresh high at $52.58 early Tuesday morning. In addition to further details on targeted ads by the company late last week, traders in Twitter are passing around an interesting note from Bernstein's Carlos Kirjner Tuesday afternoon.Kirjner suggested Twitter shares are currently fairly valued, adding the caveat, with a high degree of "uncertainty" for both bulls and bears. The Bernstein analyst pointed to several factors which investors may have not previously considered:

• the majority of monthly active users could be what he calls lurkers, users who tweet less than once in ten days;
• these users might be using the service for search or discovery of links and might end up being more receptive to ads than other kinds of users; and
• a portion of these lurkers could be using Twitter to follow their favorite users or celebrities, and not necessarily for the aforementioned link discovery.

Kirjner maintains a Market Perform rating and $40 price target on shares of Twitter.Shares of Twitter are up more than 6 percent to around $52.15 at last check.