Case Name: Twitter

Class Period: 2/6/2015 -- 7/28/2015      

Settlement Fund: $809,500,000       

Claim Filing Deadline: TBD

Ticker: TWTR

After five years of litigation, Twitter has settled a securities litigation for $809.5 million.  

“Steve Twitter? The wrestler? I didn’t know he had that kind of cash.”

Wait, you are not familiar with Twitter? Then God has smiled upon you, sir. Read no more and let ignorance remain bliss-- but certainly file a claim with us if you accidently invested in Twitter thinking that the symbol TWTR stood for a different company and you somehow lost your shirt in the process.

The class action complaint, filed on September 16, 2016, alleged that Twitter misled investors about its user engagement levels and that it was overly optimistic about monthly active user growth. This is bad because, as the complaint points out, “The Company’s main source of revenue is advertising. Because advertising revenue is driven by the total number of users on the platform and, equally as important, the level of engagement of such users, the Company and analysts have focused closely on metrics measuring total users and user engagement.”

In early February, 2015, Twitter gave rosy predictions to investors about active user growth, which soon drove the price up to $52.87 per share. Then, on April 28, 2015, Twitter began a series of disclosures about the true state of engagement and active users that would eventually drive the price, plaintiffs allege, to below $20. The complaint notes—again, written on Spetember 16, 2016 over a year later—“The stock has not recovered and presently trades at less than $20 per share.”

(TWTR currently trades at $64.01, as of this writing.)

The claim filing deadline is not yet known. Key documents like the settlement notice, the proof of claim, and plan of allocation are forthcoming, but the class period is February 6, 2015 to July 28, 2015. The class has already been certified in this case, and notices of pendency were already sent to potential class members in 2019. The claims administrator’s website has been up since then, so you want to track the website for changes, click here.

But why would you ever want to track a claims administrator’s website? That’s what we do at Chicago Clearing every day. We monitor cases from the point they are but glimmers in a plaintiff attorney’s eyes. Our team tracks each securities class action from complaint through settlement and to the first distribution and beyond. Outsourcing to CCC helps free up your time to do the real work of investing.

Or to check Twitter. I mean, maybe someone said something stupid in the past hour, and then maybe some people said something mean or funny about the stupid thing? Be right back…