Uber posted losses of $1 billion on revenue of $3.1 billion for the first quarter of 2019 in what was the company’s first earnings report as a public company.
Amid both positive and negative stock predictions, NYSE: UBER fluctuated ahead of the news, ultimately closing down .25 percent at $39.90 per share.
Analysts anticipated an adjusted net loss per share of 76 cents on earnings of about $3.1 billion, according to FactSet. Uber, in its IPO paperwork, said it expected first-quarter losses to fall between $1 billion and $1.1 billion.
Uber has traded below its IPO price in the three weeks since its rocky debut on The New York Stock Exchange. The company priced its IPO at $45 per share in early May, raising $8.1 billion in the process. The following morning, the business opened at a disappointing $42 a share, sending shockwaves through the tech ecosystem, which had predicted an IPO pop on par with Lyft’s, at least.
Uber’s performance on the public market has been a letdown. Investors, even Wall Street experts, had anticipated an initial market cap in the ballpark of $100 billion. Instead, Uber currently sits at a valuation of about $67 billion, or $5 billion lower than the $72 billion valuation it earned with its last private financing.
Uber’s competitor Lyft, for its part, is trading well below its IPO price of $72 per share, closing down 2.5 percent Thursday at $56 apiece. Its market cap today is approximately $16 billion, or just above its $15.1 billion Series I valuation. Lyft posted its first earnings report just days before Uber completed its historic IPO earlier this month.
Lyft posted first-quarter revenues of $776 million on losses of $1.14 billion, including $894 million in IPO-related expenses. The company’s revenues surpassed Wall Street estimates of $740 million while losses came in much higher than expected.
“The first quarter was a strong start to an important year, our first as a public company,” Lyft co-founder and chief executive officer Logan Green said in a statement. “Our performance was driven by the increased demand for our network and multi-modal platform, as Active Riders grew 46 percent and revenue grew 95 percent year-over-year. Transportation is one of the largest segments of our economy and we are still in the very early stages of an enormous secular shift from personal car ownership to Transportation-as-a-Service.”
Lyft said adjusted net losses came in at $211.5 million compared to $228.4 million in the first quarter of 2018. It expects revenue of more than $800 million on adjusted EBITDA losses of between $270 million and $280 million for the second-quarter of 2019. For the entire year, Lyft projects roughly $3.3 billion in total revenue on adjusted EBITDA losses of about $1.2 billion.
Pinterest, another well-known unicorn to recently IPO, shared tepid financials it what was also its first earnings report as a public company. The visual search engine posted revenues of $202 million on losses of $41.4 million for the three months ending March 31, 2019. The numbers surpassed Wall Street’s revenue estimates of about $200 million and represented significant growth from last year’s Q1 revenues of $131 million. Losses, however, came in roughly three times higher than estimates of 32 cents per share.
Pinterest went public in April, rising 25 percent during its first day trading on the NYSE. The company is now trading well below its $45 IPO price, however, closing Thursday at $25.5 per share with a market cap of about $14 billion.
Uber and Lyft’s lukewarm IPOs have shed light on Wall Street’s uncertainty toward highly priced unicorns. Many are now questioning how future venture-backed companies, particularly those in unproven industries like ride-hailing or autonomous vehicles, will fare as public companies.
This post is updating.
Source: Tech Crunch