Chennai: Global ride-hailing company Uber filed documents for its much awaited public share offering which is expected to be the largest in the tech sector. The company will begin to trade publicly in May.
Reports state that Uber is looking to raise about $10 billion as it kick-off a road show to market shares to potential investors this month. The offering is expected to be the largest US IPO this year and among the 10 largest of all time.
Uber’s valuation in its latest private investment round was more than $70 billion, but according to reports, the ride-hailing giant was likely to seek a market value of close to $100 billion. The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission contained no specific pricing or timing for the market debut for Uber.
While Uber has released partial financial results for years, the filing will provide the first complete look at its numbers and operations.
Prospective investors have the advantage of looking at ride-hailing rival Lyft Inc’s March listing as a reference point for picking apart Uber’s business and value, stated reports.
The filing noted that Uber offers ridesharing in some 700 cities. The firm has claimed it has bolder ambitions to reshape how people and goods are transported with operations such as meal deliveries, freight, and electric bikes and scooters.
“Our mission is to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion,” said the document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“We revolutionised personal mobility with ridesharing, and we are leveraging our platform to redefine the massive meal delivery and logistics industries. While we have had unparallelled growth at scale, we are just getting started,” Uber had stated in its filing.
The firm said it operates on six continents with some 14 million trips per day and has totalled more than 10 billion rides since it was founded in 2010.
The filing contained a ‘placeholder’ amount of $1 billion to be raised but that figure is expected to increase ahead of the initial public offering (IPO) expected in May.
Chief executive of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, in a letter announcing the IPO, said, “Taking this step means that we have even greater responsibilities — to our shareholders our customers and our colleagues.”
| Numbers so far |
| Uber said in February that it generated $50 billion in gross bookings last year, up about 45 per cent from 2017. Of the $11.4 billion of net revenue in 2018, only $3 billion came in the last three months of the year, up only two per cent from the previous quarter. The San Francisco-based company saw a year-over-year quarterly growth rate of 25 per cent but fell short of the 38 per cent rate for the third quarter. |
| What about Lyft? |
| Lyft, another ride-hailing firm that filed for IPO last month has lost more than 10 per cent of its value since, stated reports.
Lyft told prospective investors early on in its well-attended road show that its IPO was oversubscribed. Its shares jumped in their debut, but fell below the $72-a-share offer price. Lyft lost $911 million last year and yet investors valued the company at billions of dollars above its last private market valuation. |