Some notes from watching Uber open: - if it closes below $45(its IPO price) it will be the first time since 2008 that the happened for a major IPO - TD Ameritrade executed more orders in the first 10 minutes of trading than they did for the first 2.5 hours with Lyft. - Uber is 9% of all trading at TD Ameritrade, retail loves this stock, - market is down today, which isn't helping Uber but its probably not much of a f…
Facebook was at ~$44 on the day it IPOed, and proceeded to fall over the next month to about $19. Today its at $187.
Uber opens at $42 per share
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Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#222According to this article, stock was valued internally at $49/share in 2016 , so anyone joining in the last three years will not have enjoyed any sort of rocket-ship growth. https://news.yahoo.com/uber-employees-may-not-partying-15171...
If you’re joining a $60 billion company with thousands of employees expecting rocket-ship growth, that’s kind of on you, I think. You wouldn’t expect that from a public company; why would you from a similarly sized company that just happens to be pre-IPO?
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#223Yes, yes, I know. This kind of thinking would have me not investing in an Amazon back in the day because they weren't profitable... but they weren't also losing almost as much as they were making in revenue either... and were actually selling a tangible good to prove out a business plan of basically world domination... so yeah I'm happy with my shares of Zoom.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't think selling taxi rides is a tangible business model?
At a loss without any notion of how to make it profitable in the near future? No, I don't.
From what I saw in the S-1, their core platform -- which I assume is ride hailing -- was profitable until Q4 2018. They offer heavy incentives in order to compete, but once they're sufficiently established in a market, looks like they can become profitable on that front by no longer offering promotions in order to fight Lyft/whoever.
They just need to stay solvent longer than the competitors, and being in more markets than the competition should help with that.
Their R&D is also massive, but they could stop most of that if they needed to.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Boo to the underwriters(Morgan Stanley), who seemed to misjudge the market's appetite Who suffers if the price is quickly adjusted downward by the market? How is that different than it being released at that final market price from the get go? Naively I would think that setting it too high ensures maximum value is captured rather than going to early traders.
The investment bank sells a lot of shares to its own preferred clients. If the price then drops (because the initial offering price was too high) those preferred clients lose money. So the bank has every incentive to price it low, and usually does. So when the market goes even lower, we know that the IPO was done out of desperation and that early investors who had influence over the IPO price were eager to dump some…
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/05/morgan-stanley-which-is-un...
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Unprofitable I hear you, but... Meh, they say invest in companies who make products you use. I use the shit out of Uber and I don't plan on stopping even if the price goes up a bit. Now, I'm upper middle class, and I understand this isn't everyone's mindset, so I have no idea how the rest of the world feels. However, there are locatios, like my crappy hometown where I grew up not so fortunate circumstances, where h…
Who says to invest in companies who's products you use? That does not seem like great advice. You should invest in companies who are undervalued by the market in your opinion, not just because you like the product but because you think they have a good business around it.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon didn't turned profit for first 5 years or so after IPO. If you go back 15 years down the history, you will find many articles/analysis doubting if they would ever become profitable. However no one doubted that online retail was the future and brick-and-mortar stores will increasingly become part of the history. I see a lot of parallels here. No one doubts anymore that app-based cabs are the future and traditio…
This is a foolish viewpoint. Amazon got immense economies of scale as they grew, Uber’s costs scale alongside it. It drives me crazy that so many people equivocate them.
Is all that money lost just subsidizing the cost of the ride? If they stop subsidizing the drive price, which they will have to at some point I imagine, will people just abandon the service?
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who still gets their shoes shined?
In case you're not aware, it's in reference to a famous quote by Joe Kennedy, "You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over." As the story goes, less than a year before Black Tuesday, a shoeshine boy told him to "...buy Hindenburg."
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. The lead underwriter needs to stabilize the price post-IPO. When $unicorn_company IPOs, the underwriter actually sells more shares than the IPO company. If the price starts to drop below the originally listed price, the underwriter steps in to purchase these shares back at the IPO price to stabilize it. It's generally an optics play - how bad would it look if you as a bank, who wanted to continue to offer IPOs,…
There's a limit to how much they can prop up the price though. If the market really hates the stock they won't be able to save it.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
edited the comment, $45 was the IPO price, meant it will be the fist time since 2008 that a major IPO closed below its IPO price on the first day of trading.
Uber is currently well below it’s IPO price. Historically, that’s not uncommon.
The claim was that Uber might be the first major IPO to close below its IPO price that day.
If its not that uncommon then please show me the other major IPO's that traded below their IPO price on the day they went public.
I'll wait :)