Lyft reportedly taps Wall Street banks for an IPO

Lyft
Co-founder, John Zimmer attends the Lyft driver rally at Siren
Studios on January 27, 2015 in Hollywood,
California.
John Sciulli/Getty Images
for Lyft

• Lyft has selected JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, and Jefferies for
  an IPO,
  the Wall Street Journal Reported Tuesday.
• Both Lyft and its ride-hailing competitor Uber are racing
  towards stock listings.
• Uber has netted a $120 billion target, the same paper also
  reported Tuesday.

Lyft has selected JPMorgan
as the lead bookrunner for its imminent initial public offering,

the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, with Credit Suisse
and Jefferies also working on the listing.

The IPO is expected to happen in the first half of 2019, people
familiar with the plans tell the paper. While the valuation may
not meet its competitor
Uber’s latest reported target of $120 billion, any public
offering by Lyft will likely exceed its most recent private valuation of $15.1 billion.

While significantly smaller than Uber, Lyft has secured the
backing of major automakers like Ford as well as Alphabet,
the parent company of Google, which has a $1 billion stake. The company plans
to focus on leading the American market, as opposed to Uber’s
global ambitions, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Lyft declined to comment on the report. 

It’s been a hot year for IPO’s as companies rush to tap public
capital markets before any financial downturn in the economy that
could make that fundraising more difficult. There have
been 173
companies listed from January 1 through the end of the third
quarter in September, raising a collective $45.7 billion —
nearly 50% more than the same period last year. In the tech
sector, newly public equities have gained 33%, according to data
from Dealogic.

As a private company, Lyft has raised a total of $4.9 billion in
funding over 17 rounds since 2015, according to data from Crunchbase.