Uber lowers its IPO valuation

Taxi service Uber has lowered its valuation for its IPO, due in May, to $80-90 billion, writes WSJ. The reason is the fall in the value of the shares of Uber ahead of the placement of competitor Lyft.

Detailed. Uber expects to raise $8-10 billion during the IPO and place shares at $44-50 per share, informed sources told the publication. Uber later confirmed the specified IPO range in its filing with the SEC. Previously, the company hoped for a valuation of $90-100 billion, despite the unprofitability (about $3.3 billion last year). last summer . Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley experts valued the company at $120 billion

• One of the reasons for the decline in the valuation is Lyft's problems after the IPO. Since the offering, the company's capitalization has fallen by almost 30% to $ 16.5 billion. Fund managers say that the fall in Lyft's value makes them doubt about buying shares in Uber.
• Helping to bolster investor confidence in Uber could be a $500 million investment from PayPal, which the company is due to announce on April 26.

Read also “While everyone was running Uber, he was smarter”: a billionaire from Russia earned 5x on the largest IPO of the year

Context . Roadshow for investors Uber should begin next week. Uber's IPO will be the largest in the tech sector since 2014, following Alibaba Group's $25 billion IPO, and the largest in the world since SoftBank's telecoms IPO last year. Among the Russians who managed to invest in the company are Ziyavudin Magomedov, who is under arrest on suspicion of creating an organized crime group, co-owners of Alfa Group, led by Mikhail Fridman, and Alisher Usmanov.

• revenue in 2018. Uber's entire business generated $11.3 billion in The company has grown exponentially: in 2014, it received only $495 million, which means it has grown almost 23 times over the past four years. But the growth came at a high price: in two years - from 2016 to 2018 - losses almost reached $10 billion, and last year alone the company went into negative territory by more than $3 billion.
• California taxi service Lyft held an IPO at the very end of March - investors valued Lyft at $ 24.3 billion during the placement (including shares and options issued to employees). As The Bell found out , among the Russians, the former co-owner of Wimm-Bill-Dann, Gavril Yushvaev, invested in this company most profitably. His share in the company from the moment of the first investment before the IPO has risen in price six times.