The IPO Price and the S1

In my What Is Going To Happen In 2019 post, I wrote:

I expect we will see IPOs from big names like Uber/Lyft/Slack, although I also expect those deals will get priced well below the lofty expectations they have in mind right now. Some of that will be because of weak equity markets in the US, but it is also true that most of the IPOs in 2018 also priced below the lofty “going in” expectations of founders, managers, boards, and their bankers. The public markets have been much more sanguine about value than the late stage private markets for a long time now.

And now we are starting to get the data from these IPOs. Lyft is on the road raising roughly $2bn at a post-deal valuation range of $16bn to $20bn ($62 to $68 per share).

When I see an IPO price range, I like to go look at the S1 that the issuer has filed with the SEC prior to the road show. Here is Lyft’s S1.

Here are the things I like to look for in a S1:

1/ The total shares outstanding. You can go to the table of contents of the S1 and look for the section called “Description Of Capital Stock”. In Lyft’s S1, it says there are ~240mm shares of Class A common stock plus some amount of Class B common that is not yet detailed. The Bloomberg article I linked to above says the company is going to sell 30.8mm shares at $62 to $68 per share. So there will be at least 270mm shares outstanding plus the Class B shares. The Bloomberg folks seem to be using a post deal share count of 288mm share so that is close enough. You get to fully diluted post deal valuation by multiplying the share count (288mm) by the range ($62/share to $68/share).

2/ Revenues and earnings/losses. You can go to the table of contents of the S1 and look for the section called “Selected Consolidated Financial And Other Data” and you will find the audited financial data. I like to find the quarterly numbers because that will give you a good idea of current growth rates. These are the numbers for Lyft:

As you can see the quarterly revenues are growing at roughly $80mm a quarter so a back of the envelope guess on revenues for 2019 are [$750mm, $830mm, $910mm, $990mm] for a total of ~$3.5bn, up from $2.1bn in 2018 (yoy growth of 65%).

You can also see that the contribution (net of driver payments) has been about 45% over the past few quarters so if that ratio holds in 2019, there would be contribution of roughly $1.6bn in 2019.

For the operating costs, you can look at the difference between contribution and EBITDA, which you can see here:

Lyft spent ~$1.85bn on opex in 2019 ($921mm of contribution plus $943mm of EBITDA losses). That number grew from $1.1bn in 2017. I would expect Lyft’s operating expenses to be at least $2.25bn to $2.5bn in 2019.

Which gets you to this possible P&L for 2019:

Revenues – $3.5bn

Contribution (Net Revenues) – $1.6bn

EBITDA (loss) – $600mm to $900mm

3/ Valuation Ratios:

At the mid-point of the offering range $18bn, the price to revenue multiple is roughly 5x (18/3.5) and the multiple of net revenues (what Lyft keeps after paying drivers) is roughly 11x (18/1.6).

4/ Time to cash flow breakeven. This is harder because you have to make some assumptions about growth rates beyond 2019 and opex growth rates. But if Lyft can grow revenues at 60% per annum for a few more years and keep opex growth rates to 25-30% per annum, then it could get profitable by sometime in 2021. This suggests that the $2bn it is raising may be sufficient to get profitable, but it will be close.

So what does this mean for other late stage high growth high flyers?

To me it says if you have company focused on a big opportunity (like transportation) that is growing at north of 60% per year it is worth in the range of 10-12x net revenues to wall street right now. Because Lyft only keeps about 45% of its revenues, that works out to be 5x gross revenues.

Many late stage private companies are getting financed at valuation ratios in excess of this so they will have to grow into their eventual public market valuations. But that has been the case for quite a while now as the late stage private markets continue to pay higher prices for high growth companies than the public markets do.