Uber is not having the uberprofitable day it was hoping for.
The ride-hailing company set its IPO at $45 per share on Thursday night, but ended up selling at $42 as soon as the market opened on Friday morning. Shares soon fell even lower to $41.06, nearly recovered to their original asking price by mid-day, and dropped once again to point Uber toward one of the worst first-day IPO performances of the decade.
Forecasts originally predicted Uber would price itself at $46-$48 per share, though its eventual decision of $45 per share with an $81 billion IPO was still massive. Still, the company never actually saw that set price materialize, and only peaked at $44.74 around 1 p.m. Uber's immediate 6 percent fall after the floor opened makes it one of just 60 companies who've seen a debut day loss of 5 percent or more in the past 10 years, Bloomberg notes. And there's a strong chance it could become the eighth of those companies to actually end up in the red for its first day.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Uber has barely gone a day without some kind of public scandal or outcry in the past two years, and this past week was no exception. Drivers for Uber and rival companies went on strike by turning off their apps on Wednesday to protest low wages and a lack of worker benefits. Uber later said it reached settlements with many of the 60,000 drivers who've protested, adding that those settlements would cost upwards of $170 million. The strike was planned to coincide with Uber's first day on the market, though it's unclear if the uproar had anything to do with Uber's dismal performance.
-
Nepal chooses toddler as its new ‘living goddess’Under the Radar Girls between two and four are typically chosen to live inside the temple as the Kumari – until puberty strikes
-
October 5 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include half-truth hucksters, Capitol lockdown, and more
-
Jaguar Land Rover’s cyber bailoutTalking Point Should the government do more to protect business from the ‘cyber shockwave’?
-
Electronic Arts to go private in record $55B dealspeed read The video game giant is behind ‘The Sims’ and ‘Madden NFL’
-
New York court tosses Trump's $500M fraud fineSpeed Read A divided appeals court threw out a hefty penalty against President Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth
-
Trump said to seek government stake in IntelSpeed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to ChinaSpeed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with DisneySpeed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B dealSpeed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance mergerSpeed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profitsSpeed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
