Uber files for the most-hyped IPO of the year

Uber filed to go public, but it’s got a few more items to check off before it gets to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, likely sometime in early May.

Road show: Uber will present its financial information to potential investors, who will decide whether they want to participate in the initial public offering.

Initial price range: The company will set a range at which it hopes to sell the stock — generally a conservative range. It’s always a nice look when the price goes higher.

Revised price range: Uber may adjust its price once or a few times, depending on investors’ interest.

Final price and IPO: Uber will announce the final price and hold its IPO the day before the stock begins trading on Wall Street.

Stock starts trading: IPO investors will get a chance to put their shares on the open market. The stock will start trading a few hours into the session on Uber’s IPO day.

Here’s are some of the legal issues Uber is grappling with, according to its S-1.

Companies are obligated to tell investors why giving them money might be a risky proposition. Uber, which has never turned a profit and said it may never earn any money, could be a particularly risky company to invest in.

Uber has said this before, but it is spending like crazy to stay ahead of the competition, expand into new cities and develop driverless cars. Those aren’t cheap, and Uber said it may never turn a profit.

Uber really wants to keep its drivers classified as contractors, because it doesn’t have to pay them benefits. But drivers, activists and some lawmakers have pushed for Uber drivers to gain employee status.

Uber’s sexual assault and harassment crises and its workplace culture problems have clouded the public’s view of the company. It’s trying to win the public back with a new CEO and a campaign to restore its image. It may not succeed.

The future of driving is robotic. Uber is among the leaders in self-driving car technology testing, but a fatal accident last year has stymied its progress. Its competitors are deep-pocketed.

You may think of Uber as an app for hailing a car, but the company is betting it can provide more services. Chief among them: delivering food to your door.

In its filing to go public, Uber revealed that its meal delivery service, Uber Eats, generated nearly $1.5 billion in 2018, up from $587 million the year before. More than 15 million customers received a meal from Uber in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Uber faces stiff competition in the meal delivery market, but the company thinks it has a leg up on its rivals. “We believe that our scale enables the average delivery time for Uber Eats to be faster than the average delivery time for our competitors.”

Uber and Lyft are obviously similar companies. But their filings to go public differ in some subtle but telling ways.

SoftBank's Masa Son

Uber’s single largest shareholder isn’t the company’s founder or even the venture capital firm that was Uber’s earliest investor.

SoftBank, Masa Son’s tech conglomerate, is Uber’s biggest shareholder. SoftBank amassed a 16.3% stake in the company since December 2017.

But other people and companies will be worth a lot of money when Uber goes public.

– Matt Cohler, the head of Venture Capital firm Benchmark, owns 11% of the company

– Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder, owns 8.6%

– Garrett Camp, head of tech consultancy Expa, owns 6%

– The Saudi Public Investment Fund owns 5.3%

– Alphabet, Google’s parent company, owns 5.2%

– Ryan Graves, Uber’s CEO in 2010, owns 2.4%

* Fourth quarter of 2018

In his letter to shareholders in the company’s IPO filing, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi admitted to the company making “missteps” on its long and bumpy road to go public:

Uber says it will give one-time cash “appreciation awards” to some of its drivers.

Payments will be based on how many trips drivers have made since they started driving for Uber:

Additionally, drivers must have completed at least one trip this year and be in good standing with the company.

Drivers eligible for the appreciation awards will have the option to buy shares ahead of the IPO.

Lyft also rewarded some top drivers with cash bonuses of $1,000 or $10,000, depending on certain trip thresholds. Drivers had the option to use the money to buy shares in the company as well.

Uber continues to find itself in the spotlight over troubling safety incidents. The company says safety is its first priority, but it has a long way to go to prove it.

An April 2018 CNN investigation found that 103 Uber drivers in the US have been accused of sexually assaulting or abusing their passengers.

After CNN started asking questions, Uber made some changes to its safety policies, including:

The company pledged to release a safety transparency report with data surrounding reports of sexual assaults and abuse by drivers. CNN has been asking for this data for more than a year.

In its IPO paperwork Thursday, Uber notes:

And the safety complaints are still coming. A woman who says she was sexually assaulted by an Uber driver in Washington, DC is suing the company for $10 million.

Uber is facing another lawsuit that accuses the company of failing to warn women about a series of rapes by fake Uber drivers in LA.

Dara Khosrowshahi took over at Uber in September 2017. At that time, Uber was the most dysfunctional company in tech.

Past job: The former head of Expedia

Why him?: Khosrowshahi was viewed as someone who could be the adult in the room and put the company on track to go public. The company needed saving after a series of PR crises resulted in the forced resignation of former CEO Travis Kalanick.

More on Dara: An Iranian refuge, Khosrowshahi immigrated to the United States at the age of 9. Under Khosrowshahi, Expedia became one of the first tech company’s to legally challenge Trump’s travel ban.

Kalanick, on the other hand, was widely criticized for joining President Trump’s economic advisory council before ultimately stepping down.

For years, Uber worked to bulldoze over Lyft through a mix of aggressive fundraising and dirty tricks. But now Lyft’s troubles may be Uber’s troubles too.

Lyft, the closest proxy to Uber, quickly fell below its IPO price of $72 after going public last month. Its stock is now hovering around $60.

The lackluster public market debut by Lyft (LYFT) may add jitters to the stampede of unicorns racing to Wall Street, including Uber. The Wall Street Journal reports Uber may seek a lower valuation amid Lyft’s stock decline.

Two years ago, Uber was nearly derailed by allegations of sexism and harassment, a damning investigation into its workplace culture and the exodus of nearly all of its C-suite.

Travis Kalanick, Uber’s cofounder, CEO and the driving force behind its rapid expansion, was ousted from the company in June 2017. What followed was a rapid and very public effort to reset the organization and save Uber’s brand.

Dara Khosrowshahi, a seasoned executive brought in to replace Kalanick as CEO, worked to overhaul the company’s brash culture, hire a new bench of top execs, and ultimately pave the way for it to go public.

Uber officially filed paperwork on Thursday for what is expected to be one of the largest technology IPOs ever.

The company expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock ticker “UBER.” It said it plans to raise up to $1 billion, a placeholder amount that is likely to change.

Uber, which is the most valuable startup in the United States, joins a stampede of tech unicorns racing to Wall Street. That list includes Pinterest, Slack, Postmates and Uber’s chief rival, Lyft.