In what should be a hot initial public offering, ridesharing company Lyft announced that it filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO, according to the Financial Times.
The filing was confidential as so not yet available to the public. Lyft hasn’t yet determined how many shares it would offer or their price range. The company retained J.P. Morgan Chase, Credit Suisse Group, and Jefferies Group as its underwriters, reported the Wall Street Journal. The IPO is expected to happen sometime in the first half of next year.
Lyft’s revenues for the first half of 2018 were $909 billion, a doubling over the same period in 2017, as Inc. reported. Losses of 41% were down year over year from 62%. Like bigger rival Uber, the company has tried to scale revenue faster than losses to move toward profitability, if not yet reaching it.
Cash injections have been a regular need of both Lyft and Uber, running significantly in the red for years. Lyft has raised $4.9 billion in investment since its founding in 2012, according to the site Crunchbase. Uber has raised $24.2 billion since 2009, but has tried a rapid expansion in many countries, rather than focusing on the U.S. and Canada as Lyft has.
Should markets hold they way they have, next year might be a profitable time for Lyft to go public. U.S. tech IPO shares are up a third this year, according to the Journal. And public offerings are at their highest level since 2014.
