Telegraph
Uber will be valued at around $82bn (£63bn) when it floats in New York on Friday, after waning demand for the year’s biggest technology listing led it to price shares at the low end of expectations.
The cab-hailing app will sell shares at $45 a piece, raising around $8bn.
Although this will make it the biggest tech float since Alibaba’s record 2014 initial public offering, Uber’s listing price is well below previous estimates, which suggested the company could be worth as much as $120bn.
The disappointing stock market performance of its chief rival Lyft is believed to have weighed on investor demand for Uber shares. Lyft shares have fallen by a quarter since the company went public in March, compounded by a disappointing maiden set of results earlier this week.
Stock markets have wavered in recent days amid trade tensions between the US and China.
Uber, which made a $3bn operating loss last year, had previously said it would price shares at between $44 and $50, so a $45 pricing will be seen as a relative disappointment.
The muted valuation may, however, be a deliberate attempt to engineer a feel-good factor around the shares by creating a “pop” as trading begins and reducing the chances of repeating Lyft’s subsequent share price fall.
"We view Uber's conservative pricing as a smart and prudent strategy coming out of the box as it clearly learned from its 'little brother' Lyft, and the experience it has gone through over the past month," said analysts at Wedbush Securities.
Uber is the biggest of a wave of technology flotations taking place this year, following Lyft, Pinterest and Zoom. Others such as WeWork and Airbnb are expected to follow.
On Thursday, SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate whose Vision Fund is the biggest investor in Uber, said profits had risen by 80pc as the value of many of its start-ups increased. SoftBank invested $7bn in Uber in 2017, a stake that is now set to be worth more than $13bn.
Some of the company’s biggest cash gains came from its sales of stakes in Indian food delivery business Flipkart and chip maker Nvidia, and chief executive Masayoshi Son added that it was planning to launch a second Vision Fund this year.
