Here's what Jack Dorsey said about selling Twitter

Twitter's business is struggling and its stock price has been pummeled, erasing billions of dollars in market value.

With the current spree of tech acquisitions, highlighted by Verizon's $5 billion deal to buy Yahoo earlier this week, speculation continues to swirl that Twitter could be the next big takeover target.

During the company's quarterly results conference call on Tuesday, an analyst asked CEO Jack Dorsey why it makes sense for Twitter to continue to operate as an independent company, rather than be acquired by a bigger organization with the wherewithal to make the kind of investments Twitter needs to succeed.

Dorsey's response: Twitter has a lot more room to grow its business, and it wants to go it alone.

Here's the exchange, with Dorsey's full answer to the question:

Question: "Strategically, can you help us understand, why it makes sense to offer a Twitter independently rather than as part of a larger organization?"

Dorsey: "Our board of directors has a fiduciary responsibility to always consider that question. And they're focused on that as appropriate. We presented our 2016 plan and getting ready for our 2017 plan they're going to hold us accountable for executing on.

"As CEO I've just seen a lot of the benefit of our focus and our disciplined execution over the past year, and the changes we're making to the product focused on the use cases that we believe are important, that real time news and social commentary are actually increasing retention and engagement. And I think there's just so much farther to go in terms of our strength as not only a service of importance, but also a company and a business of importance.

"We're focused right now on what matters most and what we need to fix and we're seeing really health signs that are pointing us in the right direction in terms of what we need to continue to do.

"I have a lot of confidence in the ability and also that our five priorities are the right ones to drive sustained growth. Over time."