Twitter unseals IPO papers, hopes to raise $1 billion

NEW YORK (AP) - Twitter has unsealed the documents for its planned initial public offering of stock and says it hopes to raise up to $1 billion in one of the year's most eagerly awaited stock market debuts.

The documents revealed for the first time how much money the social networking company makes. Founded in 2006, Twitter has never turned a profit and has an uninterrupted history of losses totaling $419 million since its inception. But its revenue is growing.

Twitter disclosed three weeks ago that it filed confidential papers to start the IPO process. The company was taking advantage of federal legislation passed last year that allows companies with less than $1 billion in revenue in its previous fiscal year to avoid submitting public IPO documents.

On Thursday, Twitter Inc. unsealed the papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission, giving potential investors and its users a look inside its business. Twitter was required to unseal its documents at least three weeks before it starts holding events around the country to woo potential investors. At this rate, the company will likely price its IPO by Thanksgiving.

According to the IPO filings, Twitter generated $317 million in revenue in 2012 and had more than 218 million active users in the second quarter, up 44 percent from a year earlier. That compares with nearly 1.2 billion for Facebook and 240 million for LinkedIn.

Three-quarters of Twitter users accessed the service from a mobile device in the second quarter, and 65 percent of its advertising revenue was generated from mobile in the same period. That's more than the 71 percent and the 41 percent, respectively, for Facebook in the same period.

Twitter also said that it lost $69.3 million in the first six months of 2013, compared with a loss of $49.1 million in the same period last year. Revenue more than doubled to $254 million from $122 million. The revenue figures are largely in line with what analysts have been expecting.