Uber sets IPO price range of $44 to $50 per share, plans to raise up to $10.35B at a valuation of up to ~$84B
or maybe it's $91.5 billion. Depends how you like to count shares. https://www.bloomberg.com/... Ingrid / @ingridlunden : The reasons for the huge drop: last year it divested in Russia and SE Asia and accted for its $2b investment in Didi from China divestment. Plus, of course, COMPETITION and all the promos and incentives Uber has to run to keep people using its platform. Steve Kovach / @stevekovach : Notes on Uber: Market cap would be $83.8 billion at high end of the range. $73.7 billion at the low end. Last private valuation was $76 billion. PayPal will buy $500 million in shares at IPO price. https://www.cnbc.com/... Ingrid / @ingridlunden : Uber also published Q1 estimates: it expects a net loss of btwn $1B and $1.1B, vs net income of $3.7B last year. The road ahead is not completely smooth for this transportation company (nor its investors). https://twitter.com/... Dan Primack / @danprimack : Not surprisingly, the Uber IPO terms are more complicated than your typical terms.. Dan Primack / @danprimack : At top of its range, Uber's fully-diluted value would be $101 billion. http://www.axios.com/... Scott Austin / @scottmaustin : A little news will be buried in Uber's amended IPO filing coming tomorrow: PayPal has invested $500M in Uber at the IPO price https://www.wsj.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The roadshow math has come in well under what bankers floated: after October proposals reportedly sketched a $120B valuation, and April sourcing pointed to a $90B-$100B target, Uber is now pricing at $44-$50 a share for a valuation of up to roughly $84B — above its last private mark of $76B, but a steep discount to the banks' pitch.
That gap lands on a company whose S1 shows the strain: a Q1 net loss of $1B-$1.1B versus $3.7B of net income a year earlier, driven by divestitures in Russia and Southeast Asia, accounting on the Didi stake, and the promo spending needed to defend against competition. Four years after a raise at a $50B-or-higher valuation, the IPO is the liquidity test for all those private rounds.
First-order effects
- Uber stands to raise up to $10.35B at the top of the range, while PayPal locks in $500M of stock at the IPO price — an anchor bet by a payments rival-turned-partner on the platform's economics.
- Fully-diluted estimates run as high as ~$101B, so the headline valuation depends entirely on how shares are counted — a disclosure ambiguity public-market investors must price on day one.
Second-order effects
- Underwriters have effectively conceded that the $120B-era framing wouldn't clear the market, resetting expectations for every late-stage investor who marked Uber up toward that number.
- PayPal's $500M commitment signals that strategic buyers, not just funds, are being used to de-risk the book — a template other mega-IPOs will be pressured to copy.
Third-order effects
- If IPO prices keep landing below both private marks and banker proposals, the private valuation–liquidity gap becomes structural: late-stage paper gets marked down at listing, and growth companies must show a credible path past subsidy-driven losses before they can command their private valuations.
The trend: Late-stage tech companies are discovering that public markets price them below their private-round and banker marks unless they can show a path to profit, making the IPO a reckoning point for the entire unicorn cohort.