Twitter CFO hints he's itching to spend its $3.5 billion on 'game changing' acquisitions

Twitter's plummeting stock price has led to occasional chatter about it being a buyout target.

But with $3.5 billion in cash on its balance sheet, Twitter views itself as a buyer of other tech companies.

During Twitter's Q1 conference call on Tuesday, CFO Anthony Noto hinted that the company may be about to embark on a corporate shopping spree. Of particular interest to Noto are so-called "ad tech" companies, the behind-the-scenes nuts and bolts systems that underpin the internet's automated advertising economy.

"The fact that we have the amount of cash on the balance sheet, over $3.5 billion, leaves us with the strategic optionality to look for those assets that are game changing," Noto said on the call.

"And we're focused on, not just on consumer capture devices, but we're also focused on other opportunities that have scaled audience to leverage our great monetization vehicle, and we're also focused on ad tech technology to continue to build out our ad tech stock," he said.

"At the end of the day our goal is to be one stop shop for advertising," Noto said.