Where is Twitter Four Months After its IPO?

We’re two days away from the four-month anniversary of the Twitter TWTR IPO but where is the stock now? How has it fared as a publically traded company?

First, the price action. Remember November 6 when shares were priced at $26 per share—up from the original $17-$20 range? There was no doubt that this was a hot IPO, likely the hottest since it’s arch-rival Facebook IPOed.

It IPOed on November 7 and closed an impressive 72 percent higher that day. Through the rest of the month it would slowly move lower, reaching a low of $39.06 before rocketing to a high of $73.31 by the end of the year.

Since that time, the stock again moved lower. After a disappointing first earnings release, the stock plunged to a low of $50.03. It regained about half of those losses and now sits just above $54.

This downward trend happened while Twitter stayed out of the news, a sharp contrast from the stock's launch. Very few IPOs get the media and investor attention that Twitter did once it announced its IPO, but since that time the company hasn’t received the type of attention that Facebook or Apple get almost every day. But that could be a positive, because the investing community as a whole doesn’t appear too excited about the stock.

Twitter's stock price is still unjustifiably high according to some fundamental models, which place Twitter’s fair value at $29. Current levels price the stock at $126 per user verses $42 per user for WhatsApp—that company that Facebook reportedly overpaid for if you believe the Wall Street commentators.

. Reflecting this concern about valuation, only three of 23 analysts have a buy rating on the name and the 12-month price target on the stock is $50—lower than current levels. The stock is below its 50 day moving average, volume is diminishing, and its upward trajectory is gone.

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With only 14 percent market penetration and some evidence indicating that Twitter is having trouble growing its user base by any meaningful amount, new money isn’t moving into the name.

Investors want to see the company solve its user base issue and find a monetization strategy that allows Twitter to say that it found the secret to making money on its platform.

To be fair, Twitter has time to turn its fortunes around. Facebook wasn’t a stock market darling in the early days of its IPO either. The company had a lot of trouble finding a monetization strategy that convinced investors to put the company on their buy list. In Twitter’s case, no news could be good news although investors are going to demand meaningful signs of life when the company next reports earnings.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Tim Parker had no position in the companies mentioned.

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