US-based on-demand ride provider Lyft, which counts several corporates among its investors, raised $2.34bn today in an initial public offering in which it floated at the top of its range.
Lyft issued 32.5 million shares priced at $72.00 each. It initially planned to issue almost 30.8 million shares priced between $62 and $68 each, before upgrading the range from to $70 to $72 earlier this week.
The company was valued at $24.3bn in the offering, according to Reuters. The IPO’s underwriters have a 30-day option to buy almost 4.88 million more shares, which would boost the size of the offering to $2.65bn.
Founded in 2012, Lyft runs a ride hailing platform that facilitated rides for some 30.7 million users in 2018, through a network of about 1.9 million drivers. It made a $911m net loss in 2018 from approximately $2.16bn in revenue.
The offering comes after some $4.4bn in equity financing for Lyft, $250m of which came in a 2014 series D round featuring e-commerce firm Alibaba, Coatue Management, Third Point Ventures and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Mayfield and Founders Fund.
Lyft then closed a $680m series E round in 2015 that included e-commerce firm Rakuten, diversified holding company Icahn Enterprises and undisclosed additional investors
Automotive manufacturer invested $500m to lead the company’s series F round, which closed at $1bn in 2016, investing with Rakuten, Alibaba, Chinese ride hailing service Didi Chuxing, Kingdom Holding and Janus Capital Management at a $5.5bn post-money valuation.
Rakuten, Janus Capital, KKR’s Next Generation Technology Fund, Baillie Gifford, AllianceBernstein and PSP Investments provided $600m in series G funding for Lyft in April 2017, valuing it at $7.5bn pre-money, and carmaker Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures unit added $25m two months later.
The company secured $1.5bn in a late 2017 series G round led by internet and technology group Alphabet’s CapitalG unit that included Rakuten, AllianceBernstein, Baillie Gifford, KKR, Janus Henderson, investment and financial services group Fidelity, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan at an $11.5bn post-money valuation.
Automotive component producer Magna International invested $200m in Lyft in March 2018, before Fidelity led a $600m round featuring Senator Investment Group three months later at a $15.1bn post-money valuation.
Lyft’s co-founders, Logan Green and John Zimmer, own all of the company’s 12.8 million class B shares and none of its 240 million class A shares – the class that was offered in the IPO.
Rakuten held 13.1% of the company’s class A shares which were diluted to 11.5% in the offering. Its other notable investors are General Motors (6.8% post-IPO), Fidelity (6.8%), Andreessen Horowitz (5.5%) and Alphabet (4.7%).
JP Morgan Securities, Credit Suisse Securities (USA), Jefferies, UBS Securities, Stifel Nicolaus, RBC Capital Markets and KeyBanc Capital Markets are book-running managers for the offering, which is taking place on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
Cowen and Company, Raymond James & Associates, Canaccord Genuity, Evercore Group, Piper Jaffray, Mischler Financial Group, Tigress Financial Partners, JMP Securities, Wells Fargo Securities, KKR Capital Markets, Academy Securities and Blaylock Van are also underwriters for the IPO.
The rest of the underwriters are Penserra Securities, Siebert Cisneros Shank, Williams Capital Group, CastleOak Securities, CL King & Associates, Drexel Hamilton, Great Pacific Securities, Samuel A. Ramirez & Co, R. Seelaus and Loop Capital Markets.
Lyft’s key rival, Uber, is also set to go public this year and has reportedly already confidentially filed for its IPO. It remains to be seen whether Lyft’s success will prove a good omen, or whether it has in effect stolen Uber’s thunder.
InMotion Ventures’ managing director, Sebastian Peck, said: “Today’s IPO is a real milestone for our industry. App-based ride hailing, which began barely a decade ago, has had a fundamental impact on the transportation ecosystem, and the way we conceive of urban mobility.
“Since our investment in June 2017, the company has gone from strength to strength, and we are very excited by Lyft’s more recent evolution into a multimodal transportation platform.”
