No, this is not normal for a highly anticipated IPO.
Uber was hit by a convergence of negative events, some of which were out of his control:
- The Dow Dow Jones was already down more than 300 points before the first Uber transaction, mainly because of President Trump's imposition of higher tariffs on imports from China. Stocks recovered later, but investor sentiment was mediocre at the time when an IPO was generally occurring.
- Maybe Trump played the long revenge game on Uber, after snubbing him a few days after taking office.
- The world is a vampire. North Korea. Iran. Venezuela. Choose your geopolitical poison.
- Uber became public at the end of the week 2019 the worst performing stock market.
- Lyft had already scared investors. Earlier this week, it announced disappointing results for the first quarter and warned that 2019 would represent "maximum losses".
- The strikes of the strike drivers on Wednesday did not seem to have much impact on the availability of the car, but they sensitized and instigated tweets of many presidential candidates.
- An unwelcome attention after Axios announced for the first time that Uber's founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, had wanted to help make things sound, but had been relegated to the floor of the NYSE by the CEO current, Dara Khosrowshahi.
- Kalanick watched the bell ring with his father from a side balcony before heading to a block to celebrate with his former colleagues from Uber at Bailey's restaurant in New York.
- Uber and Lyft have recently beefed up their motorcycle discount offers, prompting a discussion in the NYSE's corridors about artificially inflated numbers. The rebates could obviously continue, but that would not help the hail's progress to get closer to profitability. Talking about that …
- Uber loses more money than any other company to become public. This is the kind of thing that everyone ignores until they do not do it.
- Uber argued that it was the next Amazon, who also spent years in the red with no apparent route to profitability.
- Investors did not agree, or thought they could wait for the numbers to improve. Or maybe until Uber finds his own Web Services (flying taxis?).
But, but, but: The IPOs are just a moment away, and Uber has always managed to become a $ 76 billion business in less than a decade. Facebook only earned 23 cents on the day of its IPO before spending 15 months below its IPO price; it is now the fourth most valuable society in the world.
The IPO of Uber was hit by the perfect storm. Other unicorns and minotaurs losing money will now monitor closely to see if they can navigate in quieter waters or if they have to start fighting for lifejackets.
