Since its IPO, which was the biggest (expected) market debut this year, shares of San-Francisco based ride hailing platform Uber fell into a downward spiral, dropping as much as 11% to $37.08 in New York. The company started trading by selling 180 million shares at $45 apiece on Thursday, but on Friday it went further down by 7.6% to trade at $41.57, and never traded above debut price even though other stocks went up. Even the company’s CEO doesn’t expect the situation to get any better in the near future.
The drop in shares is an indicator of investors’ doubts about the size of the ride-hailing market as well as Uber’s capability to manage so many segments that it has recently forayed into, like food, package delivery and its push into autonomous vehicles. On top of this, investors are also not very confident about investing into risky assets, thanks to the persisting U.S-China trade dispute which has only worsened in the recent past.
Analysts currently have rated ‘outperform’ on Uber and sees the stock reaching $65 in 2019.
Uber’s stock comes as a huge disappointment as the company failed to meet the hype it created before its initial offering. Rival platform Lyft (LYFT) too had the same luck which clocked a 29% loss since it debuted in the stock market in March.