Another chance to pick up Twitter as a trade or investment, but which is it?

6/5/2015
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)

  I bought this around $30/share and as expected it rebounded more than 30%, actually it shot up 80% in 5 months.  That would've made for a great trade, but as in investor was it worth it and is it still worth it?  Kinda.

Price at write-up $36.80


Target $50

Valuation Ratios
Price/Earnings (TTM) . . . . .Neg
Price/Sales (TTM) . . . . . . . 15.13
Earnings per share . . . . . . .-0.98
Price/Book (MRQ) . . . . . . .6.5
Price/Cash Flow (TTM) . . . Neg.
Held by institutions . . . . . . .56.47%
Short interest . . . . . . . . . . . .5.02%
Dividend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .NA

MarketCap 24.0B

I originally wrote about Twitter in May of 2014 when Twitter employees were finally free to sell their shares .  The strategy I've previously described of buying stocks when there is a dip for merely sentiment reasons and selling them when they return the mean easily applied here.  Twitter was a good trade and is a good trade but it was previously a better investment.  If you haven't invested yet, this would not be an unreasonable time to do so at around $33 as it should easily climb back to $43 a share.  I'm not as convinced as I previously was that they would successfully monetize the product without destroying it in the process, so I'm not as keen on it as a long-term investment.  If you currently own it, or are thinking of picking it up I would seriously suggest re-evaluating your stake when the price is north of $50/share.  I'd happily sell it at $70 simply because I'm not sure what direction the management will take it, which currently seems to be a very Amazon-like growth at the expense of profit - though it has worked thus far for Amazon.

There's quite a bit of risk here though for those reasons and others, but the growth in earnings per share are encouraging.  This stock is on sale but is it for a reason?  Yes, it's failed to produce the expected revenue.  Will it rebound? Probably.  What to do then is a hard decision, I'll likely sell half of my significant holdings the next time it hits $55 - or at least re-evaluate my position.  Naturally I'd like them to be consistently cash flow positive, but I suspect that's too much to ask.

Due Diligence - FB, YHOO, LNKD