2019 IPO Parade Marches On With Uber, PagerDuty On Deck

IPO news continues as details emerge on two more unicorns’ plans to go public. PagerDuty and Uber will form part of the 2019 technology IPO cohort, a key liquidity wave that should unlock hundreds of billions of dollars of illiquid wealth.

 Uber

Last night, Reuters reported that Uber will seek to sell about $10 billion worth of stock in its initial public offering and “will make public the registration of the offering on Thursday.” The $10 billion figure is inclusive of secondary offerings; not all $10 billion will find its way to Uber’s coffers.

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The company, which surely must be hoping for a better public debut than its rival Lyft, is expected to launch its investor roadshow during the week of April 29. This puts Uber on schedule to price its IPO and actually begin trading on the NYSE sometime in early May.

Among the most critical Uber questions is its worth. Lyft’s IPO set a precedent for ridesharing revenue which we explored here. But Uber’s audited growth, GAAP results, and final gross margin results will set its price apart from Lyft.

But what Reuters reports is interesting all the same — the original piece notes that Uber may aim for a “valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion.” If that’s the case, it’s a retreat from prices rumored to be as high as $120 billion. If those figures were ever serious is still a question.

PagerDuty

Now, let’s take a (short) break from the “-sharing” IPOs and turn our attention to PagerDuty.

The San Francisco-based SaaS unicorn is now planning to raise up to $240 million at a price range of $21 to $23 per share. PagerDuty had previously filed to offer the same number of shares (10.4 million) at a range of $19 to $21. As we noted last month, PagerDuty sells a service that alerts developers when things break, sold on a recurring basis

Its new price range means the company could have a non-diluted market cap of around $1.7 billion at the top end.

PagerDuty has raised a total of $173.6M since it was founded 10 years ago. Its latest funding was a $90 million Series D round raised in September 2018 at a post-money valuation of nearly $1.3 billion, according to Crunchbase data. Backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Accel, among others.

PagerDuty is following video-conferencing startup Zoom’s lead in not being deterred by ride-hailing company Lyft’s thus-far bumpy road as a public company. The company is slated to start trading Thursday on the NYSE under the ticker “PD.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias