Even if Lyft Snaps, it Beat Uber.

Lyft’s IPO planned for tomorrow March 29, 2019, will offer 30.77M shares priced between $62 and $68 each putting its valuation between $21B and $23B. CNBC reported an updated filing to price each share between $70 and $72 and I will not be surprised if the IPO ends up at about $80 per share. These developments have forced me to review the IPO chapter in my upcoming book “Uberings and Uberchats: Engineering Behaviors in Contemporary American Society” because as late as last November 2018, some analysts valued Lyft at about $15 billion and Uber somewhere between $76-$120 billion. These early estimates were made before Lyft openly filed for its IPO and since that filing and further revelations of its financial bleeds, the company’s public value has jumped by a third from $15 to $21 billion.

Over the years, many analysts have wondered about the true values of these companies without any real knowledge of how they price their services and now there are questions being asked of whether their business model is sustainable given the cuts to driver earnings despite the fact that these companies depend exclusively upon these drivers executing the front-end process of transporting persons or goods from Point A to Point B.

Uber may have played it safe, delayed or simply been outmaneuvered by the Lyft team who by going first in an avalanche of Silicon Valley tech startups that plan to go public this year, including Airbnb, Slack, Robinhood, Pinterest, Postmates, Palantir Technologies, and WeWork, may stand to benefit the most before investor hype start questioning the red ink associated especially with Uber and Lyft that are reminiscent of the dotcom boom from the 90s. Lyft’s IPO is already oversubscribed despite the decelerated growth of both Uber and Lyft from their previous reported quarters. SNAP opened its IPO in 2017 and traded as low as 72% below it within two years of its debut. Even if Lyft snaps, it may be a slow and painful one for all stakeholders, including drivers and investors given its business model allows for growth opportunities in terms of ridership, number of rides and an increase in fares to help alleviate the ~$1.50 lost on each of its 619.4 million reported rides in 2018. A 33% Snap in Lyft’s value within two years will simply bring it back to where analyst had initially valued the company but given growth opportunities for expansion beyond North America, Lyft could be a good bet for long-term investors if it can rain down its insurance and operating costs.

Despite Uber’s delays, it will still be one of the mega IPOs of all time and given its huge worldwide presence and following a hype created by Lyft and the massive media attention, Uber stands to at worst generate a success that matches its fair market value of $76-$100 billion, or at best beat the $120 billion bullish proponents are already advocating. If Uber falls short, Lyft’s tactics during this race will be a lesson for future rivalries.