Twitter has finally publicly acknowledged that it submitted an S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission—the company’s first officially acknowledged step toward its widely anticipated initial public offering, or IPO.

The announcement came over Twitter itself on Thursday afternoon.

We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale. — Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013

The company’s public SEC record does not yet reflect the new filing, but as the filing is confidential, it may not appear.

Last week, Fox Business generated quite a buzz when it based an entire article on the fact that a Twitter spokesperson responded with an ellipsis (…) in response to a question about possible IPO rumors.

For at least several months, many articles across the tech and financial world have long speculated that a Twitter IPO would come sometime in 2014. One recent industry analysis put Twitter’s estimated revenue for 2013 at over $1 billion.

The Sunday Times recently reported that the company could be worth up to $15 billion.

As Inc. reported in May 2013, Twitter hired Cynthia Gaylor earlier this year, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

On her own LinkedIn page, Gaylor says she has advised "clients across a broad array of strategic financing activities including IPOs, follow-on offerings, equity linked, private placement, and debt security transactions." Gaylor's biography also says she has "advised on transactions for Workday, ServiceNow, Palo Alto Networks, Facebook, Infoblox, Splunk, Zynga, Jive, Netflix, and Linkedin" and has "advised clients on over 150 transactions representing over $100 billion in transaction value."