Lyft files to go public and reveals it lost so, so much money last year
Lyft filed for a $100 million initial public offering on Friday.
In its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Lyft released its financial history for the first time. With the public disclosure, we now know that for the past three years Lyft has been losing money ... a lot of money.
Lyft pulled in revenue of $2.2 billion in 2018, but also recorded a net loss of more than $911 million. It lost nearly $700 million during the previous two years.
Much bigger competitor Uber is expected to file for its own IPO later this month or next month. Uber has already revealed it lost more than $1.8 billion last year. Like Lyft, the companies need to show would-be investors that ride-hailing can be a profitable business.
Lyft also listed a number of "risk factors," including insurance concerns, the possibility it could fall behind competitors when it comes to autonomous driving, and the threat from Uber. In fact, Uber came up 15 times in the filing.
Uber could go public with a $90-billion to $120-billion valuation. Uber dominates the ride-hailing space with a global presence and growing food delivery business, Uber Eats, along with e-bicycles, scooters, a trucking platform, and autonomous vehicles. Lyft is only in 300 cities in the U.S. and Canada, but has expanded to offer scooter and bike rentals. It's also working with other companies to develop self-driving cars.
Uber and Lyft have always matched each other with similar features and discounts, like shared carpool rides, driver incentives, and to some extent app design. A good example: After Uber acquired e-bike company Jump, Lyft acquired bike-share platform Motivate.
In the filing, Lyft is offering shares to "drivers in good standing who have completed at least 10,000 rides on our platform as of February 25, 2019" and drivers on its "Driver Advisory Council." Uber will reportedly do something similar for its drivers.
The competition is on.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
