Trading debut gives US taxi app a big Lyft

ShAReS in Uber’s arch-rival Lyft surged as much as 20pc during a bumpy first day of trading in New York.

The debut will be seen as a positive sign for other tech company market debuts expected this year.

Lyft sold 32.5m shares at $72 apiece on the Nasdaq exchange, valuing the company at £19bn in the largest tech float since messaging service Snapchat’s owner Snap listed in 2017.

But shares in Lyft, which operates an app to let customers hail a taxi, rose to more than $88 after the first trades were declared. They later fell back to around $80.

This meant the company was worth £21bn by late trading.

The San Francisco firm had been valued at £11.6bn in its last private fundraising round before going public.

Analysts were wary this week after Lyft raised the price range for its shares from $62$68 to $70-$72 – making some worry that this could overprice the company.

Although Lyft pipped Uber to the post with its float yesterday, Uber is expected to unveil its own plan as soon as next month and could be valued at more than £77bn.

But Lyft’s warm reception will raise hopes for other bigname Silicon Valley firms considering going public, such as the picture site Pinterest, office messaging platform Slack, holiday rental service and Airbnb. It is the first test of investors’ appetite for companies involved in the socalled ‘gig economy’, in which workers are effectively selfemployed and find customers through an app that then takes a chunk of their earnings.

Lyft, which was founded in 2012, claims to have a 40pc share of the app-based taxi market, and operates in 350 US cities as well as Canada.

It made £1.7bn in revenue last year, with losses of £696m.