Ride-sharing platform, Uber, has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a public company in what is expected to be the biggest tech IPOs in history.
In its filing prospectus, the company said since its launch in 2012, over 10billion trips had been carried out on its platform in over 700 cities across the globe with $78billion paid to its drivers.
Uber said it incurred significant operating losses of $4.0 billion and $3.0 billion in the years ended December 31, 2017, and 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, it has an accumulated deficit of $7.9 billion underscoring the precarious nature of its business.
According to Uber, it has made substantial investments to develop new offerings and technologies, such as autonomous vehicle technologies, dockless e-bikes and e-scooters, Uber Freight, and Uber Elevate, noting that autonomous vehicles will form an important part of its offerings over the long term.
Uber says it will continue to bleed cash as it seeks to recruit more drivers, find new customers, and generally, grow its share of the ride-share market in its paperwork:
“Many of our efforts to generate revenue is new and unproven, and any failure to adequately increase revenue or contain the related costs could prevent us from attaining or increasing profitability,” the statement said
According to Uber, there have many numerous instances over the years of Uber drivers assaulting their passengers and the company warns there is likely to be more in the future. Riders also can engage in criminal activity and Uber admits there’s little it can do about it. Even reporting on these incidents can hurt Uber’s brand, the company says, which is why Uber is compiling its own “transparency report” on sexual assault and harassment in an effort to get ahead of the story.
The company, which got its start as an app-based luxury car service in San Francisco in 2009, is now one of the most dominant transportation services in the world, controlling over 60 percent of the US market and logging billions of rides all over the world. Uber is now in the process of trying to build itself into a one-stop shop for many different modes of transportation, including bikes, scooters, car sharing, and public transportation. In the future, Uber aims to also have autonomous vehicles and electric aircraft available on its platform.
Travis Kalanick, who was ousted as CEO in 2017 but still owns 8.3 percent of the company’s pre-IPO shares valued at roughly $9 billion, will likely see his wealth grow by billions of dollars.
But the company said it is trying to put the Kalanick era behind it, and that is clear in the filing. Uber says it is on a “new path forward” under the leadership of CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi.
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