Ride-hailing company Lyft has priced its shares at $72 a piece and raised $2 billion prior to debuting on the NASDAQ this morning.
Lyft’s decision to price its shares at $72 apiece sits at the top of the expected range and gives the company a fully diluted market value of $24 billion. A total of 32,500,000 shares of Lyft’s Class A common stock are being offered alongside an additional 4,875,000 shares which underwriters have the option to purchase.
When Lyft hits the NASDAQ, it will become the first ride-hailing company to go public. The IPO has significantly lifted the value of Lyft from its previous valuation of $15.1 billion.
Interestingly, Tech Crunch notes that Lyft has the largest net losses of any pre-IPO business, posting losses of $911 million on revenues of $2.2 billion last year. On the other hand, it has the largest revenues of a pre-IPO company behind only Google and Facebook.
Lyft’s initial public offering is particularly important because next month, rival Uber is also expected to unveil its IPO prospectus. Uber has a value exceeding $100 billion and is perhaps one of the most anticipated IPOs in recent years. Uber reported net losses of $865 million in Q4 2018 with revenues of $3 billion, so, like Lyft, it has so far failed to post a profit.
A wave of other technology-based companies like Pinterest, Slack, Zoom, and potentially Airbnb are also planning initial public offerings in the coming months.
In the lead-up to its IPO, Lyft announced its new ‘Driver Services’ program to help support its drivers. Among the new services offered are Lyft repair garages, a Lyft debit card, mobile repair services and more.
