Twitter seeks up to $1.61 bn in IPO

Twitter said Thursday it would seek to raise up to $1.6 billion in its initial public offering expected in the coming weeks, AFP reports. In regulatory documents, the popular messaging platform boosted the IPO amount from an earlier estimate of $1 billion, saying it would sell 70 million shares in a price range between $17 and $20 a share. The document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Twitter will have an option for 10.5 million additional shares if there is enough demand. Twitter said it expects net proceeds of between $1.25 billion and $1.44 billion depending on the option, and would use the money "for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures." Twitter said last week it would list on the New York Stock Exchange, documents showed Tuesday, shunning the tech-heavy Nasdaq which saw major problems in Facebook's market debut in 2012. The shares will trade under the symbol "TWTR." The latest documents did not update information of the number of users or finances. Twitter's monthly active users are estimated at 232 million. The company lost $133 million in the first nine months of 2012 on revenues of $422 million.