THE WEEK AHEAD

A unicorn comes to Wall Street

Ride-sharing company Lyft is expected to list its stock on the Nasdaq stock exchange beginning Friday morning. It may be the second-largest transportation network firm behind Uber, but it would become the first to the public market.

If Lyft is as successful as expected at selling stock to the public, the company will be worth as much as Hershey — about $23 billion. Not bad for a firm that lost almost $1 billion last year. Lyft has been growing fast, though. In the U.S. barely 1 in 5 ridesharing trips were taken through Lyft in 2016. Two years later, as the market grew, Lyft was carrying more than a third of all rides.

Investors, take note: These figures, while included in the company’s federal regulatory filing, come from an Internet market research firm that owns more than 5 percent of Lyft. Do you think an early investor has an incentive to make the company look good?

At the end of last year, Lyft had about $2 billion in the bank. In Lyft’s regulatory filing ahead of its public stock sale, it says its cash “will be sufficient” for this year. A lot of the stock that will be sold to the public won’t give the new company owners much say the business, either. Most of the “super-shares” that come with more voting power will remain in the hands of insiders.

Whether or not investors hail shares of Lyft, they should separate out the hype.

Tom Hudson, Miami Herald