Lyft Files S-1

Some useful numbers from the filing:

1 billion+ cumulative rides.

$8.1 billion in bookings in 2018

$2.2 billion revenue in 2018

From risks:

>> "We have incurred net losses each year since our inception and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We incurred net losses of $682.8 million, $688.3 million and $911.3 million in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively."

Some stylized notes:

- If they do go public for $20B+ they that would be for more than Twitter and Facebook went public for. Would you really want to own Lyft over FB and TWTR the day they went public? That's a very large ask of the public markets.

EDIT To be clear I"m talking about their valuation multiple not the abs valuation.

- working with JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Jefferies. So I guess we know 3 banks who won't be on the Uber IPO. Goldman probably has that locked up

- doing a traditional IPO

- banks pitching a valuation of $18 to $30 Billion, I believe their last round as at $15.1B

- Seems rushed to beat Uber to market, maybe there is only room for 1 hugely money losing, $10B+ ride sharing company?

- how do you loose $1B in a year on $2.2B in revenues and ave any concrete plan at all to become profitable?

> Lyft generated $563 million in revenue in the third quarter, up from $300 million in the same period a year earlier, a person familiar with the matter said in October. Losses increased to $254 million in the period from $195 million in 2017, the person said.

So losses increase as revenue increases, again, what's the profitability plan?

I actually have no idea how to value this company? What metrics should we be looking for? How do use future cash flows to evaluate a company when their future cash flows are all negative by even the most optimistic of estimations?

- Will be interesting to watch the first 6 months, if things don't go well, Uber could be in for a rough ride on the public markets. Uber has a much more diverse product line, maybe that will be their pitch.. Watch Uber's S1 to see if they promote food delivery, etc over ride sharing.

- Part of Uber's pitch may be their stake in Didi ala Yahoo and Alibaba, if that's true

- can't find any info yet on how long employee's and investors will be locked up

- Lyft has lots of room for international growth as they are only in North America

- shareholders with more than 5 percent of stock

  - Rakuten Europe S.à r.l.with 13.05 percent

  - General Motors Holdings LLC with 7.76 percent

  - Fidelity associated entities with 7.71 percent

  - Andreessen Horowitz associated entities with 6.25 percent

  - Alphabet Inc. entities with 5.33 percent.

- Lyft's founders did negotiate for a special class of stock that gives them 20 votes for each of their shares. Will be interesting to see if they get locked out of indexes for this. Index/ETF flow can be a godsend to management as they tend to be passive and long term holders.

- from the S1 "We have incurred net losses each year since our inception and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We incurred net losses of $682.8 million, $688.3 million and $911.3 million in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively."

- will list on Nasdaq under ticker LYFT, sweet ticker!!

Some notes:

- They claim their US ride sharing marketshare is 39% - that seems high to me.

- $800 mil in marketing spend in 2018 from $500 mil in 2017 - they say this increase was largely driven by cost of acquiring new drivers. I honestly thought this would be higher as a % of revenue - this topline number also includes spend on promotions/discounts for passengers.

20% of Uber's revenue with 50% in losses.[0]

I want to see Lyft succeed just to counter Uber, but yeah, those numbers need to be healthier

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-results/uber-posts-5...

Well yes they chose to dilute themselves every time they accepted a new round of funding, but that is much smaller than I ever imagined