Lyft races ahead of Uber to Wall Street listing

Lyft filed documents Friday for its stock offering, racing ahead of ride-sharing rival Uber for a Wall Street listing that sets the stage for a series of big venture-backed tech firms to hit public markets.

The initial public offering (IPO) filing offered the first glimpse of Lyft's finances and showed the San Francisco firm lost $911 million on $2.2 billion in 2018 revenues.

The documents show revenues grew sharply from $343 million in 2016, but losses widened as well.

Lyft's private valuation has been estimated at $15 billion, considerably smaller than Uber but making it one of the largest startups worth more than $1 billion, popularly known as "unicorns."

It will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol LYFT and, according to some reports, will seek a valuation of more than $20 billion.

"We are laser-focused on revolutionizing transportation and continue to lead the market in innovation," Lyft said in its filing, setting a preliminary target of raising $100 million, a "placeholder" figure likely to be revised higher.

The company has discussed the possibility of expanding globally but so far has operated only in the US and Canada.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said only that Lyft "may continue" to expand its international operations, without offering specifics.

Lyft added that its future plans are "multimodal," and involve using shared bikes and scooters for shorter rides, while enabling users to see transit options on its mobile application. The date and pricing of the offering were not announced.

The document said Lyft had completed over one billion rides since its inception in 2012 and had bookings last year of $8.1 billion.

It has a 39 percent share of the US rideshare market, according to a survey cited in the filing. Lyft's mission, according to the statement, revolves around reducing the number of cars on roads, and includes a path toward self-driving vehicles.