As Twitter prepares to hit the road to begin peddling its stock to the public, the company disclosed new revenue numbers on Tuesday that may help it persuade investors to buy the shares.
In an updated prospectus for investors, the social networking company reported that its revenue rose sharply in the third quarter of this year, to $169 million, more than double the level of the same quarter a year ago. It also said its monthly users grew to 232 million in the third quarter, about 76 percent of them using the service from a mobile device.
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GraphicTwitter continues to lose money, however, incurring high employee stock and compensation costs and spending heavily on research and development.
Twitter plans to price its initial public offering on the night of Nov. 14, and begin trading the next day, according to people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to speak about the offering beyond what is in the prospectus, and who cautioned that the timing could still change.
The company has indicated it plans to raise about $1 billion from the stock sale, although that amount could change if demand is heavy or existing stockholders decide to sell.
Twitter is expected to begin meeting with institutional investors as soon as Oct. 25, according to the people briefed on the matter. During the trip, the company and its advisers will crisscross the country in what is expected to be a series of standing-room-only meetings to persuade investors to pay a higher price.
“Things are looking positive for Twitter,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst with the research firm eMarketer who closely tracks the company. With most Internet companies posting their biggest revenue figures in the fourth quarter, she said, “This sets Twitter up to really have a great year.”
In its filing on Tuesday, Twitter also said it had picked the New York Stock Exchange as the home for its listing, giving the market operator a win over its rival, the Nasdaq stock market.
Both exchanges have competed hard to claim Twitter as a client. As of Tuesday, Nasdaq played host to 20 tech I.P.O.’s this year, compared to the New York Exchange’s 19.
Nasdaq has traditionally been the venue of choice for technology initial offerings, particularly Internet companies like Facebook and Groupon, though the New York Exchange snagged LinkedIn.
A number of problems over the last two years have clouded Nasdaq’s reputation, beginning with system malfunctions that hamstrung Facebook’s market debut in the spring of 2012. And last summer, Nasdaq suffered a three-hour trading halt — now known as the flash freeze — after some of its systems were overwhelmed by technical issues.
In a statement, the New York Exchange said: “This is a decisive win for the N.Y.S.E. We are grateful for Twitter’s confidence in our platform and look forward to partnering with them.”
The amended filing also provided more details on how much stock Twitter insiders and big institutional investors held in the company and the billions they stand to make from the offering.
Twitter disclosed that its largest stockholder is not Evan Williams, the co-founder who owns 12 percent of the company, but investment entities affiliated with Suhail R. Rizvi, a little-known Hollywood investor.
Mr. Rizvi and funds affiliated with his firm, Rizvi Traverse Management, have a 17.9 percent stake in the company, according to the filing. JPMorgan Chase and its affiliated funds own a 10.3 percent stake. Twitter’s earliest institutional investors, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures, have 6.8 percent and 5.9 percent stakes.
Benchmark Capital Partners, which first invested when Twitter was a 25-employee company, has a 6.6 percent stake. DST Global, the investment firm founded by Yuri Milner, the Russian billionaire, has a 5 percent stake.
The advertising revenue numbers suggest that the company’s strategy of cutting advertising prices while offering more targeted ads is paying off handsomely. For every 1,000 times Twitter users visited the site, conducted a search or refreshed the screen in the third quarter, the social networking company took in an average of 97 cents in ad revenue — up 49 percent from a year ago.
Still, advertising on Twitter is in its infancy, and the company has been working to convince major brands that its 140-character messages can be an effective platform for reaching customers.
“Can we actually move purchases in stores?” Kevin Weil, Twitter’s vice president of revenue products, asked at an industry conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Mr. Weil said the company’s research, conducted in partnership with Datalogix, which tracks offline purchase, shows that Twitter ads do lead directly to sales. For consumer brands advertising on Twitter, sales rose 8 percent among those who saw the ad, with higher increases from consumers who clicked on the ad or became followers of the brand.
Twitter has set other terms of its initial public offering as well. It is expected to pay its banks an underwriting fee of just 3.25 percent of proceeds raised, according to another person briefed on the arrangement.
Companies preparing big, highly anticipated offerings can often command lower prices from their banks. Facebook, for instance, paid an underwriting fee of just 1.1 percent on its $16 billion I.P.O.
Twitter is also near a deal for a $1 billion credit line from its main underwriters, this person added.
News of the Twitter road show’s projected timing was first reported by CNBC.
Vindu Goel reported from San Francisco and Michael J. de la Merced from New York. Alexandra Stevenson and David Gelles contributed reporting from New York.
An article on Wednesday about a rise in Twitter’s revenue misstated the advertising income from its users. In the third quarter, the company took in an average of 97 cents in revenue for every 1,000 times Twitter users visited the site, conducted a search or refreshed the screen in the third quarter. It did not take in that much each time such activity occurred.