New York, .- The premiere of Uber on Wall Street was one of the most anticipated operations this year and ended up starting convulsively and with losses of 7.56% to 41.60 dollars per share, affected by the stock market crash. his rival Lyft and the commercial uncertainty between China and the United States.
Uber debuted below the price that established yesterday for its IPO, $ 45, and remained at loss throughout the day, rising slightly to exceed $ 44, but sliding again as the end of the session approached .
The minimum intraday, however, happened shortly after the start of operations ten minutes before noon, when it fell 8.60% to 41.06 dollars per share.
Uber, which originally aspired to surpass the 100,000 million market capitalization -in its last round of private investments was 120,000 million-, had to settle for 69,711 million at the close of the session.
The bad luck meant that the debut of this technology based in San Francisco (California), the largest public operation of sale (opv) since the IPO of the Chinese Alibaba in 2014, occurred in the midst of an escalation of tensions in the trade negotiations between China and the United States.
However, the markets reacted with interest to the statements made by US officials about the progress of the talks, tracing the losses, while Uber continued losing throughout the day.
It seems that in the case of Uber, the bad opening of its main competitor in the US, Lyft, which at the end of March debuted on the Nasdaq with great expectation, but since then has left 29% of the value with the one that started on Wall Street.
Investors reacted cautiously, in line with what Investis.com analyst Haris Anwar thinks: “We do not believe that buying your shares shortly after your IPO is a good idea, it’s better to wait at least six months to see how it goes to the actions and to know the quarterly results of the company “.
Uber’s 2018 results, detailed in its IPO prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), reported a turnover of 11.27 billion dollars with a net profit of 997 million.
However, the company founded in 2009 recorded an adjusted operating result, which includes the depreciation and amortization costs, negative (-1,850 million dollars), a figure that seemed to influence the attitude of investors towards their securities.
The CEO of the firm, Dara Khosrowshashi, was present at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), who in an interview with CNBC was convinced that his company is a similar case to Amazon, which also debuted in a stock market with losses, although with much less time in the market.
“I think it’s a fair comparison at the wrong time,” said the company’s chief executive, while “we are much bigger, more mature as a company and if you look at growth rates, our clientele increases by 33% year-on-year, and transactions 36%. “
Shortly after they began operations in red, the company’s financial manager, Nelson Chai, said on the same chain that it was “a hard day”, but that “we are looking forward to seeing how the shares continue to trade over time, which is what we are building “.
The greatest strength of Uber, unlike its competitors, is the diversification of its business, which is not based entirely on passenger transport, but includes a branch of delivery of food at home (Uber Eats) and another of logistics and transport of food. merchandise (Uber Freight).
Uber is the largest of the “Unicorns” – companies valued at more than 1,000 million dollars before their exit to the markets – whose debut was planned this year on Wall Street.
Before him, the first to open the way was his rival Lyft, which today closed with a decline of 7.41% of its titles to 51.09 dollars, far from its starting price of 72 dollars.
The IPO was led by the financial institutions Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merril Lynch. (EFEUSA)
