8 ms·

Better source, and one that the article references: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/uber-s-third-quarter-loss-is-said-to-widen-to-1-46-billi

Better source, and one that the article references: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/uber-s-third-quarter-loss-is-said-to-widen-to-1-46-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/uber-s-th... At this point, two things are clear to me: 1) Uber will IPO, there's just oo much money and influence behind it to stop that. 2) I'd be really worried if I was an employee about my options and also about my job. Employee's now ahve two large worries hanging over their heads..... What about my job and what about my options... With Uber preparing for an IPO, they'll od what most companies do, clean up their balance sheet. And with the losses piling up they'll start cutting costs, which as for most tech companies starts with employee's. And now I don't htink anyone believes that they'll IPO at anywhere close to the 60+ Billion valuation they had a year ago. Infact SNAP looks like a great model to study for what an Uber IPO might look like, lots of good first day to week action with price rises but then a steady stream of down days leading up to their first quarter report which will almost certainly show them loosing money and then much larger short interest leading up to a huge lock up expiry of their employee's options. Given how much money institutional investors put into the company, and the late stage at when they did and given how much they valued the company at, I'd be very afraid if I was an option holding employee at just how many shares are going to flood the market before I get to try and redeem my own options. And to top it all off, the biggest thing driving their valuation recently, self driving cars, appears to be in serious jeopardy, can anyone make a credible case of Uber having self driving fleet in the next 5 years? EDIT to those of you who i confused with layoffs. No one is saying that Uber needs to be profitable when they go public, but their burn rate had better be decreasing. T hey don't need to fire 3 billion dollars worth of salary, no one would think that's a wise move, but they had better show they are moving towards profitability, and the easiest way to show this is a string of quarter where their quarterly loss is decreasing and the easiest way to do that is to cut costs and the largest cost is people.

hatred 9y ago
I couldn't understand the part about an employee and loosing my job. Are you saying that they won't be able to sell their equity even at a steep discount in 90 days? Even, if they incur a loss of ~30-40% over the current prevailing price; it would still be a fortune. They can easily do that to save on the tax or did you mean something else?
- sleepychu 9y ago
  1) They're worried they'll be fired to make the IPO work. 2) They're worried the value of their options will drop out before they have the option to exercise them.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    And I would add that in situations like this, employees should be very careful assuming that they'll get a price anything like what the most recent investors are getting. Check out Table 2 here, down on page 45: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455 It uses Square as an example. The headline valuation price from their E round suggests that a share of stock was worth $15.46. But later investors can have all sorts of preferences. Common stock, though, is valued at $5.62. As people who were here for the last bubble know, this is exacerbated when valuations dip. I know a number of people who worked their asses off for companies that got sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. But the employees saw nothing, because investors get paid first.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thisisit 9y ago
  Well, let's use the SNAP example which has been quoted above. They went public earlier this year. With burgeoning balance sheet they have to fire people: https://www.businessinsider.in/Snap-hit-with-more-layoffs-plans-to-slow-hiring-in-2018/articleshow/61156322.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Snap-hit-with-more-layoffs-pl...
  - adjkant 9y ago
    To be fair, 18 / 2000 is very small and hardly a dent - the layoffs came because they are decreasing the rate of recruiting, which is still notable but is not laying off engineers (yet anyways). If Uber wanted to make IPO and were pressed for money, a slowing of hiring would not be enough.
- deleted 9y ago
saas_co_de 9y ago
An IPO would be the best scenario but it is far from certain. Given the widespread unethical (and probably criminal) activity that was conducted at the highest levels of the company I would say there are even odds that there are some big skeletons in the closet that opening the books would reveal and that is why they have stayed private so long. Why else would Benchmark and others be running for the exits now? If all the smart money that knows the company best is dumping at a discount it does not paint a pretty picture.
- hbosch 9y ago
  > Given the widespread unethical (and probably criminal) activity that was conducted at the highest levels of the company I would say there are even odds that there are some big skeletons in the closet that opening the books would reveal and that is why they have stayed private so long. I don't think this can be understated. In the social and political climate of today, it would be hard (I think) for Uber to have a banner IPO. When you look at where we are, with sexual misconduct headlining the nightly news, I feel like Uber would generally like to avoid public scrutiny until the issue is not as hot.
  - watwut 9y ago
    I kind of suspect that Uber might have skeletons much bigger then sexual misconduct. I would be surprised if their financials were in order and if legal documents did not contained a lot of lies.
- staticautomatic 9y ago
  I don't think any Uber investors can be characterized as smart, even if they have made or end up making money.
  - allenz 9y ago
    Hindsight is always 2020.
    - 9y ago
albertgoeswoof 9y ago
Are Uber's costs really in the tech space? It's a complex tech operation for sure, but I wouldn't have thought they could make up much of the 1.5bn USD if they fired a bunch of developers. These bulk of these costs must be in marketing, customer acquisition and discounted fares, right?
- aetherson 9y ago
  So remember that it's not that they burned $1.5B this quarter; they burned $3.5B (net revenue of $2B, $1.5B loss). If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue). Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.
  - hrasyid 9y ago
    How about driver bonuses? Would those count as expenses, pr as the difference between gross bookings and net revenue? I know sometimes (especially in new markets) Uber let drivers keep 100% and then add bonuses on top of that.
    - aetherson 9y ago
      I believe that bonuses and other incentives, to drivers and passengers, are the source of a huge amount of expenses and are counted out of the $2B net revenue, not included in the difference between bookings and revenue.
- mrgordon 9y ago
  They have around 12,000 employees according to Wikipedia (and a few other sources show a similar figure). If we figure the average employee is 250,000/year in liabilities on the balance sheet (salary + benefits + options/RSUs) then thats $3 billion a year in employee expenses. I don't think $250k is too unrealistic considering the massive capital gains many employees must have on paper as well as the high level of talent Uber has lured away from competitors. They had the creator of Google Maps, the Otto acquisition (and the subsequent legal costs if we want to factor those in), and a whole lot of other experts around mapping / autonomous vehicles.
__sha3d2 9y ago
> And to top it all off, the biggest thing driving their valuation recently, self driving cars, appears to be in serious jeopardy, can anyone make a credible case of Uber having self driving fleet in the next 5 years? Uber currently sends teams to major cities all over the world to build maps for self driving cars. They outfit cars in those cities with 6 figure camera rigs and enable 'passive collection', where maps are built over the course of normal rides. After that they actively collect any missing pieces and move on to the next city. They've got teams in C / D level cities (which I won't name because I don't want to ID anyone but are the international equivalents of a Baltimore MD or Miami FL). They are not positioned as well as say Tesla IMO but they also aren't just sitting around waiting for something to happen on this front.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  And if those maps were built with illegally obtained lidar technology (or just if the judge thinks they might have been), they become fruit of the poisonous tree.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ErikVandeWater 9y ago
    I thought fruit of the poisonous tree was only relevant in evidence collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
  - __sha3d2 9y ago
    I think the responder is correct that FOTPT is not applicable here, but I wonder if there is an analogous legal concept for the product of a stolen good.
- SyneRyder 9y ago
  I wonder if one of those international cities is Perth, Australia? We had a news report today that Perth is launching trials of a self-driving on-demand taxi service in April 2018: http://www.zdnet.com/article/navya-bringing-driverless-vehicle-trials-to-perth-next-year/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/navya-bringing-driverless-vehic... (I realize the trials aren't Uber, but if our government is getting ready to allow self-driving taxis, I imagine Uber would want to be prepared & ready to launch ASAP.)
adjkant 9y ago
When looking at SNAP vs UBER, I think that this negative publicity will stop that first positive bump. Each negative scandal after will hit their stock hard, along with each quarter report. I do agree it will happen, but I think most everyone will see through it. Given their burn rate and their IPO scheduled for 2019, they will still struggle to get there even with the incoming round. At this point it's hard to find any winners besides Lyft.
- njj023 9y ago
  Winners besides Lyft? Their financials are on-par if not worse - https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/unpacking-lyfts-projected-financials/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/unpacking-lyfts-projected-... Part of Uber's increased losses are stemming directly from massive burn on Lyfts end to try and capitalize on Uber's problems.
  - adjkant 9y ago
    How is 1.5B a quarter on-par or worse than 750M per year?
    - njj023 9y ago
      An apples to apples comparison would standardize across: 1. GAAP v.s. non GAAP. Different media sites are reporting between 1.5B and 750B for Uber because of this discrepancy. 2. Timelines - Uber numbers are from Q3. Lyft from H1 3. Size discrepancies - it's better to look at loss per trip given that Uber is far bigger.
      - adjkant 9y ago
        You're still mixing different time period sizes in 1. I think even size adjusted per ride, Lyft may still be in a better position. 6B vs 750M (more if using newer numbers) when the market ratio of Lyft is nearing a third means that unless their yearly losses are over 2B, they still have the edge. Overall I agree somewhat, but when what matters is explicitly runway (who can survive the longest), scaling for size may not make sense. Lyft's smaller current size might actually advantage them in this marathon.
sctb 9y ago
Thanks! We've updated the link from https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/ubers-losses-grew-to-1-5-billion-last-quarter/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/ubers-losses-grew-to-1-5-b....
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
A third worry: Uber's brand on your resume. At every turn there just seems like increasingly shady stuff coming out of there: covering up data breaches, covering up IP theft, etc.
- njj023 9y ago
  Every person who I know has left Uber this year is at some company HN would probably agree as "better" (FANGs as backup, startups if more adventurous). So unless you're in the handful caught in the crossfire of these issues, Uber is an extremely strong brand name on a resume.
  - michaelbuckbee 9y ago
    How long does this remain so though? Is there a point where it starts to look bad (like why didn't you leave earlier?)
    - njj023 9y ago
      Wasn't the case in the beginning of the year and isn't the case at the end (I know people who have left this week for FANG). And that period arguably coincides with the most intense PR snafu for Uber. Most companies are smart enough to distinguish between a rotten top-mandated culture against individual actions, and not generalize 14k+ employees. Also worth noting that a large contingent were already former FANG employees so some are just returning back home. With regards to why not move sooner, isn't the company going through an entirely top-down overhaul starting with the CEO? If someone wants to be part of that change, and if they still believe in the ride-sharing space and if they were never in the crossfires of any of this anyways, then all of these are valid reasons to stick around.
    - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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  - 9y ago
dalbasal 9y ago
What happens to stock which isn't part of the IPO? Ie, all the stock owned by employees, investors, etc? Does it become instantly tradeable? I would imagine that considering the long road, a lot of people are really ready to sell. There are lots of owners that will have achieved 50X or more return, even at a low market cap. Former employees with option strike prices @ £20m, early investors that got in @ £150m.... That means far too much of their net worth is in Uber. They need out regardless of fundamentals. They've probably felt this way for a while. Meanwhile all the shifty news about workplace bullying, an ousted ceo, legal battles. I guess this applies to all IPOs. Why don't prices plummet as soon as all the people who want out can get out?
- smeyer 9y ago
  There are lockup periods that prevent them selling. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer/12/ipo-lockup-period.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer/12/ipo-lockup-period... >For example, Facebook's IPO lock up prevented the sale of 271 million shares during the company's first three months of public ownership. FB hit an all-time low of $19.69 the day its first lock-up period ended, a price about 50% lower than the share price on the day the company went public. Further restrictions prevented the sale of another 1.66 billion shares through mid-2013. Facebook's unusual lock-up policy released insider shares at five different dates.
  - rconti 9y ago
    All the more reason to quit just before the IPO! (assuming they own the shares)
- hobbyjogger 9y ago
  Nearly all insiders (i.e. management, investors, employees, etc.) will be subject to a "lock-up" on an IPO that prevents them from selling immediately. Typically the lock-up lasts for 180 days, but this can vary. Share price does often drop when the lock-up expires, but usually not as much as you'd expect--the number of restricted shares to be release and resulting liquidity effects of that expiration are well know and disclosed in public filings. So this mostly gets baked into pricing well in advance.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
I generally agree with this, however if Softbank easily fills their tender offer I wonder if it puts a crimp in the IPO plans. Lets say that Softbank's tender is filled with a bunch of executives and Kalnick contributing their shares to get a payoff (shades of Groupon's last raise before going public). What does that look like to potential investors on the roadshow? How much bump will they need to be 'promised' before they subscribe? No matter what I think Uber will remain a big part of the unicorn bubble story going forward.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Fwiw Travis Kalnick isn't selling.
hkmurakami 9y ago
All recent employees (within the last 2 years+) are on RSUs, not options. Option exercise price is 409A price, not the preferred price per share. These two things make it highly unlikely that any option holder is truly under water.

hatred 9y ago

I couldn't understand the part about an employee and loosing my job. Are you saying that they won't be able to sell their equity even at a steep discount in 90 days? Even, if they incur a loss of ~30-40% over the current prevailing price; it would still be a fortune. They can easily do that to save on the tax or did you mean something else?

sleepychu 9y ago
1) They're worried they'll be fired to make the IPO work. 2) They're worried the value of their options will drop out before they have the option to exercise them.
- wpietri 9y ago
  And I would add that in situations like this, employees should be very careful assuming that they'll get a price anything like what the most recent investors are getting. Check out Table 2 here, down on page 45: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2955455 It uses Square as an example. The headline valuation price from their E round suggests that a share of stock was worth $15.46. But later investors can have all sorts of preferences. Common stock, though, is valued at $5.62. As people who were here for the last bubble know, this is exacerbated when valuations dip. I know a number of people who worked their asses off for companies that got sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. But the employees saw nothing, because investors get paid first.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thisisit 9y ago
Well, let's use the SNAP example which has been quoted above. They went public earlier this year. With burgeoning balance sheet they have to fire people: https://www.businessinsider.in/Snap-hit-with-more-layoffs-plans-to-slow-hiring-in-2018/articleshow/61156322.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/Snap-hit-with-more-layoffs-pl...
- adjkant 9y ago
  To be fair, 18 / 2000 is very small and hardly a dent - the layoffs came because they are decreasing the rate of recruiting, which is still notable but is not laying off engineers (yet anyways). If Uber wanted to make IPO and were pressed for money, a slowing of hiring would not be enough.
deleted 9y ago

saas_co_de 9y ago

An IPO would be the best scenario but it is far from certain. Given the widespread unethical (and probably criminal) activity that was conducted at the highest levels of the company I would say there are even odds that there are some big skeletons in the closet that opening the books would reveal and that is why they have stayed private so long. Why else would Benchmark and others be running for the exits now? If all the smart money that knows the company best is dumping at a discount it does not paint a pretty picture.

hbosch 9y ago
> Given the widespread unethical (and probably criminal) activity that was conducted at the highest levels of the company I would say there are even odds that there are some big skeletons in the closet that opening the books would reveal and that is why they have stayed private so long. I don't think this can be understated. In the social and political climate of today, it would be hard (I think) for Uber to have a banner IPO. When you look at where we are, with sexual misconduct headlining the nightly news, I feel like Uber would generally like to avoid public scrutiny until the issue is not as hot.
- watwut 9y ago
  I kind of suspect that Uber might have skeletons much bigger then sexual misconduct. I would be surprised if their financials were in order and if legal documents did not contained a lot of lies.
staticautomatic 9y ago
I don't think any Uber investors can be characterized as smart, even if they have made or end up making money.
- allenz 9y ago
  Hindsight is always 2020.
  - 9y ago

albertgoeswoof 9y ago

Are Uber's costs really in the tech space? It's a complex tech operation for sure, but I wouldn't have thought they could make up much of the 1.5bn USD if they fired a bunch of developers. These bulk of these costs must be in marketing, customer acquisition and discounted fares, right?

aetherson 9y ago
So remember that it's not that they burned $1.5B this quarter; they burned $3.5B (net revenue of $2B, $1.5B loss). If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue). Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.
- hrasyid 9y ago
  How about driver bonuses? Would those count as expenses, pr as the difference between gross bookings and net revenue? I know sometimes (especially in new markets) Uber let drivers keep 100% and then add bonuses on top of that.
  - aetherson 9y ago
    I believe that bonuses and other incentives, to drivers and passengers, are the source of a huge amount of expenses and are counted out of the $2B net revenue, not included in the difference between bookings and revenue.
mrgordon 9y ago
They have around 12,000 employees according to Wikipedia (and a few other sources show a similar figure). If we figure the average employee is 250,000/year in liabilities on the balance sheet (salary + benefits + options/RSUs) then thats $3 billion a year in employee expenses. I don't think $250k is too unrealistic considering the massive capital gains many employees must have on paper as well as the high level of talent Uber has lured away from competitors. They had the creator of Google Maps, the Otto acquisition (and the subsequent legal costs if we want to factor those in), and a whole lot of other experts around mapping / autonomous vehicles.

__sha3d2 9y ago

> And to top it all off, the biggest thing driving their valuation recently, self driving cars, appears to be in serious jeopardy, can anyone make a credible case of Uber having self driving fleet in the next 5 years? Uber currently sends teams to major cities all over the world to build maps for self driving cars. They outfit cars in those cities with 6 figure camera rigs and enable 'passive collection', where maps are built over the course of normal rides. After that they actively collect any missing pieces and move on to the next city. They've got teams in C / D level cities (which I won't name because I don't want to ID anyone but are the international equivalents of a Baltimore MD or Miami FL). They are not positioned as well as say Tesla IMO but they also aren't just sitting around waiting for something to happen on this front.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Judgmentality 9y ago
And if those maps were built with illegally obtained lidar technology (or just if the judge thinks they might have been), they become fruit of the poisonous tree.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ErikVandeWater 9y ago
  I thought fruit of the poisonous tree was only relevant in evidence collection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
- __sha3d2 9y ago
  I think the responder is correct that FOTPT is not applicable here, but I wonder if there is an analogous legal concept for the product of a stolen good.
SyneRyder 9y ago
I wonder if one of those international cities is Perth, Australia? We had a news report today that Perth is launching trials of a self-driving on-demand taxi service in April 2018: http://www.zdnet.com/article/navya-bringing-driverless-vehicle-trials-to-perth-next-year/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/navya-bringing-driverless-vehic... (I realize the trials aren't Uber, but if our government is getting ready to allow self-driving taxis, I imagine Uber would want to be prepared & ready to launch ASAP.)

adjkant 9y ago

When looking at SNAP vs UBER, I think that this negative publicity will stop that first positive bump. Each negative scandal after will hit their stock hard, along with each quarter report. I do agree it will happen, but I think most everyone will see through it. Given their burn rate and their IPO scheduled for 2019, they will still struggle to get there even with the incoming round. At this point it's hard to find any winners besides Lyft.

njj023 9y ago
Winners besides Lyft? Their financials are on-par if not worse - https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/unpacking-lyfts-projected-financials/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/unpacking-lyfts-projected-... Part of Uber's increased losses are stemming directly from massive burn on Lyfts end to try and capitalize on Uber's problems.
- adjkant 9y ago
  How is 1.5B a quarter on-par or worse than 750M per year?
  - njj023 9y ago
    An apples to apples comparison would standardize across: 1. GAAP v.s. non GAAP. Different media sites are reporting between 1.5B and 750B for Uber because of this discrepancy. 2. Timelines - Uber numbers are from Q3. Lyft from H1 3. Size discrepancies - it's better to look at loss per trip given that Uber is far bigger.
    - adjkant 9y ago
      You're still mixing different time period sizes in 1. I think even size adjusted per ride, Lyft may still be in a better position. 6B vs 750M (more if using newer numbers) when the market ratio of Lyft is nearing a third means that unless their yearly losses are over 2B, they still have the edge. Overall I agree somewhat, but when what matters is explicitly runway (who can survive the longest), scaling for size may not make sense. Lyft's smaller current size might actually advantage them in this marathon.

sctb 9y ago

Thanks! We've updated the link from https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/ubers-losses-grew-to-1-5-billion-last-quarter/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/ubers-losses-grew-to-1-5-b....

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

A third worry: Uber's brand on your resume. At every turn there just seems like increasingly shady stuff coming out of there: covering up data breaches, covering up IP theft, etc.

njj023 9y ago
Every person who I know has left Uber this year is at some company HN would probably agree as "better" (FANGs as backup, startups if more adventurous). So unless you're in the handful caught in the crossfire of these issues, Uber is an extremely strong brand name on a resume.
- michaelbuckbee 9y ago
  How long does this remain so though? Is there a point where it starts to look bad (like why didn't you leave earlier?)
  - njj023 9y ago
    Wasn't the case in the beginning of the year and isn't the case at the end (I know people who have left this week for FANG). And that period arguably coincides with the most intense PR snafu for Uber. Most companies are smart enough to distinguish between a rotten top-mandated culture against individual actions, and not generalize 14k+ employees. Also worth noting that a large contingent were already former FANG employees so some are just returning back home. With regards to why not move sooner, isn't the company going through an entirely top-down overhaul starting with the CEO? If someone wants to be part of that change, and if they still believe in the ride-sharing space and if they were never in the crossfires of any of this anyways, then all of these are valid reasons to stick around.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 9y ago

dalbasal 9y ago

What happens to stock which isn't part of the IPO? Ie, all the stock owned by employees, investors, etc? Does it become instantly tradeable? I would imagine that considering the long road, a lot of people are really ready to sell. There are lots of owners that will have achieved 50X or more return, even at a low market cap. Former employees with option strike prices @ £20m, early investors that got in @ £150m.... That means far too much of their net worth is in Uber. They need out regardless of fundamentals. They've probably felt this way for a while. Meanwhile all the shifty news about workplace bullying, an ousted ceo, legal battles. I guess this applies to all IPOs. Why don't prices plummet as soon as all the people who want out can get out?

smeyer 9y ago
There are lockup periods that prevent them selling. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer/12/ipo-lockup-period.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer/12/ipo-lockup-period... >For example, Facebook's IPO lock up prevented the sale of 271 million shares during the company's first three months of public ownership. FB hit an all-time low of $19.69 the day its first lock-up period ended, a price about 50% lower than the share price on the day the company went public. Further restrictions prevented the sale of another 1.66 billion shares through mid-2013. Facebook's unusual lock-up policy released insider shares at five different dates.
- rconti 9y ago
  All the more reason to quit just before the IPO! (assuming they own the shares)
hobbyjogger 9y ago
Nearly all insiders (i.e. management, investors, employees, etc.) will be subject to a "lock-up" on an IPO that prevents them from selling immediately. Typically the lock-up lasts for 180 days, but this can vary. Share price does often drop when the lock-up expires, but usually not as much as you'd expect--the number of restricted shares to be release and resulting liquidity effects of that expiration are well know and disclosed in public filings. So this mostly gets baked into pricing well in advance.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

I generally agree with this, however if Softbank easily fills their tender offer I wonder if it puts a crimp in the IPO plans. Lets say that Softbank's tender is filled with a bunch of executives and Kalnick contributing their shares to get a payoff (shades of Groupon's last raise before going public). What does that look like to potential investors on the roadshow? How much bump will they need to be 'promised' before they subscribe? No matter what I think Uber will remain a big part of the unicorn bubble story going forward.

hkmurakami 9y ago
Fwiw Travis Kalnick isn't selling.

hkmurakami 9y ago

All recent employees (within the last 2 years+) are on RSUs, not options. Option exercise price is 409A price, not the preferred price per share. These two things make it highly unlikely that any option holder is truly under water.