Ride-hail firm Uber has been valued at USD82bn ahead of its NYSE listing in what is expected to be one of the biggest stock market flotations this year.
Uber is asking investors to pay USD45 a share, at the lower end of the price range expected. The firm is seeking to avoid the fate of ride-hail rival rival Lyft whose shares fell by up to a third after its recent listing on the NASDAQ.
In its prospectus, Uber said its mission is to 'ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion'. Uber also said it plans to grow its current activity by expanding further into six near-term priority countries: Argentina, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and Spain, where it said "our ability to grow our Ridesharing operations to scale is currently and may continue to be limited by significant regulatory restrictions".
The company said: "We revolutionized personal mobility with Ridesharing, and we are leveraging our platform to redefine the massive meal delivery and logistics industries. While we have had unparalleled growth at scale, we are just getting started: only 2% of the population in the 63 countries where we operate used our offerings in the quarter ended December 31, 2019."
Uber also said it has a "massive, efficient, and intelligent network consisting of tens of millions of drivers, consumers, restaurants, shippers, carriers, and dockless e-bikes and e-scooters, as well as underlying data, technology, and shared infrastructure." The prospectus went on: "Our network becomes smarter with every trip. In over 700 cities around the world, our network powers movement at the touch of a button for millions, and we hope eventually billions, of people. We have massive network scale and liquidity, with 1.5 billion trips and an average wait time of five minutes for a rider to be picked up by a driver in the quarter ended December 31, 2018."
After a number of high-profile scandals and incidents involving drivers, Uber also said it is 'committed to building a best-in-class compliance program'. It claimed 'tremendous progress in creating a program that is designed to prevent and detect violations of corporate policy, law, and regulations'. It added: "We continue to enhance our compliance and ethics program by conducting top-down risk assessments and developing policies and practices customized for our growing and evolving global business."
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By GlobalData