Twitter (TWTR) Held Talks to Acquire Flipboard for $1B in Stock - Report

Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) has held an "ongoing series of talks" to acquire Flipboard, Re/code reported Monday. An all-stock deal would value the social personal magazine app at $1 billion, the report said.

Despite a recent flurry of activity, however, talks seemed to have currently stalled, Re/code's Kara Swisher said.

SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Robert Peck notes if true the deal would be Twitter's largest ever transaction (TellApart ~$550M and MoPub ~$350M) and an all-stock transaction would likely be ~4% dilutive. This would follow Twitter’s recent ~$550M acquisition of TellApart which was ~2% dilutive. Peck also recalls he pointed to Flipboard as a logical acquisition in their note following Twitter’s $1.3B convertible raise in September, 2014.

Peck said perhaps the most interesting link between the two companies is on the management and investor level. Flipboard CEO and founder Mike McCue was a Twitter board member until 2012. Further, early investors in Flipboard include Jack Dorsey, Rizvi Traverse Management and Goldman Sachs.

The analyst continues to believe that M&A activity remains a focus area for Twitter including: ad tech, video, curation, ecommerce, and analytics.

"Flipboard’s user friendly content aggregation across multiple platforms and content types as well as recent push for a more streamlined web-based experience and Promoted Items product could be a fit for Twitter," Peck said.

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