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.
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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.
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