Outpacing the New York Stock Exchange’s losses on another rocky day of trading, Uber’s disappointing IPO is becoming disastrous, falling an additional 10.8 per cent in its second day as a public company.
Uber, which controls the lion’s share of the ride-hailing market in the U.S., rattled investors with a 7.6 per cent dip from its $65-per-share debut Friday. As a result of its outsized valuation, that modest drop crowned Uber the worst-performing day one IPO in U.S. stock market history, according to the University of Florida Professor Jay Ritter. It hit the market at a valuation of around $118 billion, and, with today’s losses, sits closer to $97 billion.
Ritter noted that while early investors may still be seeing enormous percentage gains, those that bought in more recently in private rounds or on the open market Friday, Uber’s performance has not been good.
He was quick to note that these huge losses and the resulting lower valuation created “more upside potential,” but that he suspects Uber and its key competitor Lyft will “continue to be very volatile” due to “huge amounts of uncertainty about their future profitability,” many of which are based on nothing more than assumptions—the near-term viability of self-driving vehicles for instances.
While day two losses may not tell us much about the overall health of the company, Ritter told Gizmodo that it’s “entirely possible [Uber] will drop further” before it ever rebounds. That reading of the events seems to be shared by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who wrote to Uber staff this afternoon that he expects “some tough public market times over the coming months.”