Uber Is Already a Little Public

How’s Uber Technologies Inc.’s initial public offering going?

I think that means … mediocre? Not terrible, whatever, it’s fine. Having more orders than you have shares to sell is better than having fewer, though I wasn’t worried, and three times oversubscribed is not a crazy blowout. People tend to inflate their orders in big IPOs, and a three-times-oversubscribed book is more like “reasonable healthy demand” than “people beating down the doors to get stock.” Lyft Inc.’s IPO was 20 times oversubscribed. And having enough demand to price at the top of the range is good, sure, but it seems like there is not enough demand to price above the range. That’s fine, pricing at the top is a success, but it’s a little disappointing. There had been talk of Uber going public at a valuation as high as $120 billion, but that was a long time ago; at the top of its current IPO range, it will have a fully diluted value of about $91.5 billion. Uber and its bankers undoubtedly hoped, during the IPO roadshow, to find enough demand to push that valuation up; it seems like so far they haven’t.