UPDATED 22:12 EDT / APRIL 11 2019

EMERGING TECH

It’s official: Uber files to go public on a valuation of $90-100B

After years of speculation, it’s finally official: Uber Technologies Inc. is going public as the ride-hailing giant filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday.

In what will be one of the biggest initial public offerings of all time, Uber said it’s seeking to sell about $10 billion in stock on a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion.

Uber reported that it booked $11.27 billion in revenue for 2018, up 42% from 2017. Technically, Uber booked a profit of $1 billion in 2018, an improvement of a loss of $2.6 billion in 2017 but only because of the sale of its businesses in Southeast Asia and Russia. Excluding those sales, Uber would have booked an operating loss of about $3 billion.

Those loss figures may not improve in the short term, either, with Uber saying in its filing that “we expect our operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future and we may not achieve profitability.” Uber had $6.4 billion cash on hand as of the end of 2018 and $6.9 billion of long-term debt.

Also disclosed in the filing: Uber said it now operates in 63 countries and 700 cities. It also reported that more than 91 million people use one of Uber’s services at least once a month and its drivers complete more than 14 million trips a day.

Although it exited a number of major markets, Uber did so through share swaps, retaining significant holdings in companies that were previously its rivals. As of the filing, Uber owns a 15.4% stake in China’s Didi Chuxing Technology Co. Ltd., a 23.2% stake in Southeast Asia’s Grab Taxi Pte. Ltd. and a 38% stake in Russia’s Yandex N.V.

More than $24 billion in venture capital funding later, itself a record amount of VC, Uber said going into its IPO that its largest external shareholders were SoftBank with a 16.3% stake followed by Benchmark (11%), Expa (6%), Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (5.3%) and Alphabet Inc. (5.2%). Former Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, who was forced to resign in 2017 following a shareholder revolt, owns 8.6% of Uber pre-IPO.

Uber also said in its filing that it would provide qualifying drivers with a cash reward when it goes public of an amount equal to $100, $500, $1,000 or $10,000, based on the number of lifetime trips completed by the qualifying driver.

Although in absolute dollars Uber’s IPO is only the eighth-largest IPO of all time, it’s the second-largest tech IPO by market capitalization at its high end behind the float of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. in 2014.

To say Uber’s IPO is significant would be an understatement. How the market reacts to the IPO of the unprofitable unicorn will be the ultimate test of investor appetite for huge money-losing tech firms.

Photo: Pixabay

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