Hailing Mary

26 April 2019 By Richard Beales Follow @richardbeales1

The ride-hailing app wants an IPO market value of up to $84 bln before dilution, reflecting the share-price slide of rival Lyft. Uber also lost $1 bln in the first quarter, on a top line only 20 pct up on last year. The big question: whether its heavy investment ever pays off.

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Uber Technologies on April 26 filed an updated draft prospectus for its initial public offering.

The ride-hailing app indicated a price range of $44 to $50 per share. At the top of the range, it is aiming to raise $9 billion from investors at a market capitalization of nearly $84 billion, before dilution from restricted stock awards – less than suggested by earlier news reports.

The company also said PayPal would buy $500 million of stock from the company at the IPO price alongside the expansion of the two firms’ global partnership.

Uber also for the first time gave indicative first-quarter earnings figures, showing revenue increased to about $3.1 billion in the three months to March 31, some 20 percent more than in the same period of 2018, and a net loss of around $1 billion.

The core platform contribution margin, which Uber says reflects profit or loss after direct expenses and is described by the company as a useful indicator of the economics of its core businesses, declined to a loss in the range 4 percent to 7 percent in the first quarter from an 18 percent profit a year earlier.

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