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Lyft jumps more than 10% in its historic trading debut — and is now valued at $27 billion
- Lyft, the first ride-hailing company to hit the public market, began trading Friday on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
- Its shares opened at $87.24, jumping 21% from the $72 where they priced Thursday evening. That brought its valuation to just over $29 billion.
- Lyft shares gave back some gains in the afternoon, but the company still carries a market value of roughly $27 billion.
- Several Wall Street analysts are already bullish on the world's second-largest ride-share company.
- Watch Lyft trade live.
Lyft, the first ride-hailing company to launch on a US public market, began trading Friday morning under the ticker "LYFT." Shares jumped 21% to $87.24 apiece as they opened, bringing the valuation to just over $29 billion.
The company priced its initial public offering at $72 per share the evening prior, at the upper-end of its expected range.
But the newly minted stock's rally was fading by midday, as shares had given up around half of their opening gains by 1 P.M. ET. Lyft was trading just above $81 a share, below where they'd opened earlier in the session.
Lyft's offering raised about $2.69 billion, which it plans to spend on "working capital, operating expenses, and capital expenditures," as well as acquiring or investing in businesses, according to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange and Commission.
While potential investors will have a chance to buy into one of the largest US-listed technology IPOs in recent years, one thing they won't have is equal say in how the company is run.
That's because Lyft will have a dual-class structure consisting of Class A and Class B shares. That means outside investors of the former are entitled to one vote per share while shareholders in the latter are entitled to 20 votes per share.
Investor appetite for Lyft's publicly traded shares was strong heading into Friday's debut despite the company providing no clear timeline for reaching profitability.
Lyft earlier this week raised its expected IPO range from between $62 and $68 a share to $70 to $72 after its offering was oversubscribed. In other words, demand for its IPO exceeded the number of shares issued.
Read more: READY FOR LYFT OFF: Lyft to IPO today at whopping $21 billion valuation
In the race to go public during what's expected to be a banner year for high-profile IPOs — with Airbnb, Slack, and Peloton all expected to debut — Lyft is set to beat out rival Uber to the public markets.
"In our opinion while Lyft has clearly benefited from some of the negative PR issues that Uber faced in 2017/early 2018, going forward the battle for market share will be a bit more balanced," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to clients earlier this week.
Ives initiated coverage with a "neutral" investment rating and a 12-month price target of $80.
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