Lyft IPO Confirmed For March 29, Company Expects $23 Billion Valuation

Ride-hailing giant Lyft will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 29 under the LYFT stock symbol.

Lyft kicked off its official road show for the initial public offering this week and put 30 million shares up for sale with an anticipated price of between $62 and $68 per share. This will raise more than $2 billion, and when it lists on the stock market next week, Lyft could be valued at up to $23 billion, the company said in a regulatory filing.

The New York Times reports that Lyft is seeking to have the biggest technology initial public offering since 2014, when Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba went public at a $169 billion valuation. Lyft’s target is also much greater than its most recent $15.1 billion valuation after a private funding round.

A host of other big technology companies are planning to go public this year, including Pinterest, Postmates, and Slack. However, it is Lyft’s ride-hailing rival, Uber, which is expected to blow all the others out of the water with a valuation of up to $120 billion.

Beyond competing in the same industry, Lyft and Uber also share a less favorable commonality: neither has been able to turn consistent profits, and senior IPO market strategist Matthew Kennedy from Renaissance Capital believes it will be interesting to see how investors respond to the companies going public.

“We’re looking at Lyft as a bellwether for the summer I.P.O. market. The others in the pipeline are all watching Lyft and looking to see whether investors are interested in companies that are highly unprofitable but highly valuable,” Kennedy said.

One interesting tidbit to emerge from Lyft’s new filing is that the company’s founders, Logan Green and John Zimmer, will control nearly 49 per cent of the company’s voting shares despite owning less than 5 per cent of outstanding stock.