Uber’s IPO didn’t exactly have a gangbusters first day of trading. There have been plenty of IPOs that have had worse openings than Uber’s 7.6% decline from its IPO price, but according to a Gizmodo article, the sheer size of the deal made the dollar losses suffered during Uber’s first day the largest in U.S. history:
According to University of Florida professor Jay Ritter, Uber’s 7.62 percent decline since hitting the NYSE makes it “bigger than first day dollar losses of any prior IPO in the U.S.” In terms of percentage losses, Uber’s dip doesn’t even scratch the surface of the worst IPOs. But the staggering valuation of the company makes it, in raw scale, “among the top 10 IPOs ever” including companies outside the U.S., Ritter told Gizmodo in a phone interview. That single digit decline resulted in an estimated $617 million paper losses.
Oh well, easy come, easy go. To make matters worse, the article points out that this first-day loss comes despite the fact that Uber’s IPO valuation of $76.5 billion represented a significant haircut from the $90 billion and $120 billion valuation that some analysts placed on the company just a month before the offering.
-John Jenkins, TheCorporateCounsel.net May 14, 2019
