Twitter won’t be looking for a sale in the near future and may be better off on its own, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey said at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference held earlier this week. The 41-year-ould touted Twitter’s independence as one of its core strengths, adding that it allows the firm to pursue a broad range of ventures and suggesting that the company is presently able to take risks that a frugal parent may not approve. Such freedom transcends hardware and spans all media formats, Twitter CEO and co-founder said in response to an analyst question about the recent speculation concerning a potential sale of the microblogging platform.
While the 41-year-old now appears to be dismissive of a sale, the San Francisco, California-based company has been aggressively pursuing such a move just over a year ago but failed to find a suitable buyer, with all of its suitors eventually dropping out of the race to acquire it by late 2016. The social media giant is now in a much stronger position to decide its fate than it was 16 months ago, primarily because it finally managed to make money over the final three months of 2017 which marked its first profitable quarter since its launch in the summer of 2006. Going forward, the company is looking to improve its performance through a series of large bets on video content, being convinced it will eventually come to a position to compete with more traditional streaming platforms once smartphones become the go-to devices for casting content to TVs. According to Twitter’s previous comments on the matter, such a development may become a reality within five years, depending on how quickly the relevant technologies advance.
The acquisition of Twitter has previously been considered by everyone from Salesforce and Google to Apple and Disney, according to older reports. The company’s current market cap amounts to just over $24.7 billion, with its stock now trading at nearly $33.50 after spending over two years well below the $30 mark. Twitter made major cost-cutting moves over that troubled period, with those efforts leading to numerous layoffs and the discontinuation of popular video streaming service Vine.