Lyft IPO Raises More Money Than Expected

It may be well behind Uber when it comes to market share, but Lyft can now boast that it has become the first publicly traded ride-hailing firm.

This week, Lyft announced an initial public offering price of $72 per share, putting its valuation at over $24 billion. As The New York Times reports, the price makes it one of the most valuable American companies to go public in the last decade. On Friday, the shares opened for trading at an even higher price of $87.24.

Investors are clearly interested in Lyft despite its recent losses. Although its revenue totaled $2.16 billion in 2018, double from the previous year, it incurred a loss of $911 million. That’s up from a loss of $688 million in 2017.

In February, Lyft commanded 30.3 percent of the market in the U.S. While that’s still well behind Uber with 67.3 percent of the market, Lyft has crept up 5 percentage points from a year ago, according to research company Second Measure, which tracks ride-hailing market share based on credit card purchases.

Uber is soon expected to hold the biggest IPO of the past few years, despite having suffered heavy losses itself. The company has filed the paperwork, joining Pinterest, Slack, and other tech companies looking to go public.

Lyft has managed to avoid a lot of the controversies Uber has suffered in recent years, including allegations of widespread sexual harassment with the firing of more than 20 employees. The company also faced the contentious departure of CEO Travis Kalanick and an investigation into its use of police-evading “Greyball” software. Uber also shut down autonomous testing temporarily after a test vehicle killed a woman in Arizona, although it was determined the safety operator was watching a video rather than the road just before the impact.

The market’s early interest in Lyft, and the resulting capital gains, could have a positive effect on the company’s autonomous driving development. Last year, the company partnered with Magna on driverless car development, and it has also been working with Aptiv on a commercial self-driving network.

Source: Lyft, The New York Times, Second Measure, Reuters

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