December 26, 2018
A major test will come early next year if Lyft and Uber go public. Both companies have made preliminary, confidential filings for IPOs. Manhattan Venture Partners, an IPO research firm, assigns a “fair market value” of $19 billion to Lyft and pegs Uber’s value at $52 billion, partly based on its 17.5% equity stake in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi Chuxing. Based on their most recent private-market fund raising, Lyft was valued at $15.1 billion, and Uber, at $76 billion.
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“Uber thought they’ll just kind of grow their business and these guys will go away,” says Santosh Rao, head of research at Manhattan Venture Partners LLC. Now, “Lyft is in a strong competitive position.”
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Santosh Rao, an analyst at Manhattan Venture Partners, has called this the “free rider effect.”
“The company was able to focus more time and resources on marketing its specific brand whilst Uber had to bear the responsibility of building consumer awareness around ride-hailing/sharing and establishing a new service category,” he said in a note to clients this week.
“Lyft has also benefited from the aggressiveness Uber displayed in pushing for a legal framework for ridesharing applications. This meant lower risk levels for Lyft while entering a new city that already had Uber.”
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Uber has a history of maneuvering to one-up Lyft so it could appear to be a step ahead of its business rival. In 2014, as Lyft was preparing to launch its carpooling service, Uber rushed to publicly announce its own carpool, even though it did not have the service ready, according to people familiar with the matter.
Uber must be thinking it “did all the heavy lifting, took all the risks,” said Santosh Rao, head of research at Manhattan Venture Partners, a Lyft investor. “They can’t let Lyft take the credit and define the expectations of investors.”
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“Lyft has the clear early-mover advantage, and they will definitely get the benefit of the doubt,” Santosh Rao, head of research at the merchant bank Manhattan Venture Partners, told Business Insider. “No one knows how to value these companies. Is it a software company? Is it a car company? Is it a service?”
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