# UBER FILES PAPERS FOR IPO.



## Hugh G (Sep 22, 2016)

*Uber prepares for long-awaited IPO*

DECEMBER 8, 2018 3:53PM
https://amp.news.com.au/finance/bus...t/news-story/a44c72a21705a858bd9e77e6c9b2a4a3

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Ride-hailing giant Uber could go public as soon as the first quarter of next year.

Joshua Franklin and Heather Somerville

Uber Technologies Inc has filed paperwork for an initial public offering, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, taking a step closer to a key milestone for one of the most closely watched and controversial companies in Silicon Valley.

The ride-hailing company filed the confidential paperwork on Thursday, one of the sources said, in lock-step with its smaller US rival, Lyft Inc, which also announced on Thursday it had filed for an IPO.

The simultaneous filings extend the protracted battle between Uber and Lyft, which as fierce rivals have often rolled out identical services and matched each other's prices. Uber is eager to beat Lyft to Wall Street, according to sources familiar with the matter, a sign of the company's entrenched competitiveness.

Its filing sets the stage for one of the biggest technology listings ever. Uber's valuation in its most recent private financing was $US76 billion ($A105b), and it could be worth $US120 billion ($A167b) in an IPO.

Its listing next year would be the largest in what is expected to be a string of public debuts by highly valued Silicon Valley companies, including apartment-renting company Airbnb Inc and workplace messaging firm Slack. Ongoing market volatility, however, could alter companies' plans.

The IPO will be a test of public market investor tolerance for Uber's legal and workplace controversies, which embroiled the company for most of last year, and on Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi's progress in turning around the company.

Khosrowshahi took over just over than a year ago, and has repeatedly stated publicly he would take Uber public in 2019. In August, he hired the company's first chief financial officer in more than three years.

Together, Uber and Lyft will test public market investor appetitive for the ride-hailing business, which emerged less than a decade ago and has proven wildly popular, but also unprofitable.

Uber in the third quarter lost $US1.07 billion and is struggling with slowing growth, although its gross bookings, at $US12.7 billion, reflect the company's enormous scale. Its revenue for the quarter was $US2.95 billion, a 5 per cent boost from the previous quarter. Its bookings grew just six per cent for the quarter.

Uber has raised about $18 billion from an array of investors since 2010, and it now faces a deadline to go public.

An investment by SoftBank that closed in January, which gave the Japanese investor a 15 per cent stake in Uber, included a provision that requires Uber to file for an IPO by September 30 of next year or the company risks allowing restrictions on shareholder stock transfers to expire.

Uber has not formally chosen underwriting banks, although Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are likely to get the lead roles, sources told Reuters. Lyft hired JPMorgan Chase & Co, Credit Suisse and Jefferies as underwriters.

The Wall Street Journal reported Uber's filing earlier on Friday.

Becoming a public company will bring a heightened level of investor scrutiny and exposure to Uber, which suffered a string of scandals when the company was led by co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick, who resigned last year.


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## Hugh G (Sep 22, 2016)

WALL STREET JOURNAL

*Uber Joins Lyft in Race to Tap Investors*
*The emerging pipeline of IPOs indicates the potential for 2019 to be a record-breaking year*

Uber filed documents signaling its intent to conduct an initial public offering.


By Greg Bensinger and Maureen Farrell
Updated Dec. 7, 2018 11:16 p.m. ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-lays-groundwork-for-ipo-1544231655

Uber Technologies Inc. filed paperwork confidentially this week for its initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter, as it races with smaller rival Lyft Inc. to be the first to market.

The S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission puts Uber neck-and-neck with Lyft. Both planned IPOs are shaping up to be among the biggest in a spate of offerings aimed for 2019. Lyft said Thursday it had filed its S-1, and people familiar with the matter have said it is aiming to debut in March or April.

Uber's filing indicates it could go public as soon as the first quarter, as The Wall Street Journal reported in October. That would be sooner than many observers had expected. Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi has said he expected to seek a debut in next year's second half.

Uber has dubbed planning around its IPO "Project Liberty," according to one of the people familiar with its plans.

That may be a sly reference to the thousands of employees and investors who have waited years to sell their full stake in the company for a profit, one person said. Uber has held recent secondary sales, allowing some investors and workers to sell a portion of their stakes.

Details of Uber's filing, including exactly when it was submitted, weren't immediately available. The company's banking advisers have suggested the ride-hailing firm could go public at a valuation of $120 billion, the Journal has reported. The firm's most recent private valuation was $76 billion, when it sold a roughly $500 million stake to Toyota.

Based on the pipeline of potential IPOs, which includes data-mining company Palantir Technologies Inc., Slack Technologies Inc. and Airbnb Inc., 2019 could be a record-breaking year for market debuts in terms of dollars raised. It could top the high-water mark reached in 2000, when tech companies raced to cash in on lofty valuations at the height of the dot-com boom.

Uber and Lyft, along with companies outside the U.S. like China's Didi Chuxing Technology Co. and Singapore's Grab, have radically changed the way people get around in urban areas and have upended traditional cab businesses. The companies have leveraged their core businesses to expand into other services, like meal delivery and bike sharing.

But Uber, like Lyft, is unprofitable. Its third-quarter loss widened to $1.07 billion amid a sales gain of 38% to $2.95 billion, and it has indicated in recent bond-offering documents it doesn't expect to get out of the red for at least three years. Lyft had a loss of $254 million on sales of $563 million in the most recent quarter, the Journal has reported.

Lyft has raised $5.1 billion to date, compared with about $20 billion for Uber. Both figures include debt financing. Uber has 20,000 employees world-wide, which is four times more than Lyft has.

For its presentations to potential investors, Uber is likely to emphasize the success of its side projects such as prepared-food-delivery unit UberEats and trucking business Freight, people familiar with the matter have said. It operates in about 70 countries world-wide, while Lyft is just in the U.S. and Canada.

Uber had 69% of the U.S. market, while Lyft had 28% as of October, according to Second Measure, which tracks credit-card spending data.

Mr. Khosrowshahi has put IPO planning at the forefront of his work in recent months. Among recent hires are the company's first chief financial officer in more than three years, a new chairman and a chief compliance officer.

Uber is also weighing strategic transactions ahead of the IPO, including mergers and acquisitions, that could push out the timeline by several months, people familiar with matter said. Mr. Khosrowshahi and Uber expect that these deals, should they come together, could boost the valuation in the offering, these people said.

Uber last year weathered a series of scandals and setbacks, including claims of workplace sexual harassment, the alleged theft of self-driving-car trade secrets and several federal investigations into its business practices. Investors forced out co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO, ushering in Mr. Khosrowshahi from Expedia Group Inc. On his first appearance in front of employees in August 2017, Mr. Khosrowshahi addressed his plans to go public, saying it could happen in as little as 18 months. The recent filing suggests the company is on pace with that guidance.

Investors have privately praised Mr. Khosrowshahi for taking a more collaborative approach with regulators, after early wins in London and Brazil where Uber's business was threatened by new rules.

Uber is still investing heavily in its self-driving-car division, which cost about three-quarters of a billion dollars to operate in 2017. After a fatal accident in March involving one of the robot vehicles, Uber has taken the vehicles off the roads, closed its operations in Arizona and cut staff in other offices, including Pittsburgh. It has a pending application to return the high-tech autos to roads in Pennsylvania.

Although Mr. Khosrowshahi has pledged his support for continued investment in self-driving vehicles, some investors and executives have urged him to further cut spending or dispatch the division.


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