Lyft races to IPO!

Lyft reveals $2bn revenues as it races to IPO (FT)

• Car booking app Lyft will IPO this year and while valuation details are yet to be defined, it was last valued at $14.5bn when it raised $600m in its last private fundraising in 2018.
• Lyft was founded in 2012 and operates in over 300 cities across the US and Canada, with over 18.6m users.
• Other tech start-ups which are due to IPO this year include Uber, Pinterest and Slack.

Analysis and Comments

• I don’t have a view on Lyft as an investment, I will leave a judgement on that to others. I do however find two aspects of the planned IPO interesting.
• The first is around what looks to be the next wave of large tech stocks coming to the market. From a European perspective I find it discouraging that pretty much all of these companies are US based. Obviously much of this is driven by where the pools of pre-IPO/ VC funding are to be found.
• However, it will be interesting to see if this balance shifts as advanced online retailing, Industrial IoT, Agtech and electrification (all sectors where Europe can & should be a leader) gain traction.

• The other issue is around dual share classes as a mechanism for floating but still retaining control – from a corporate governance perspective I agree with the Council of Institutional Investors; how can shareholders exercise the necessary oversight if management can ignore them?