Tech Brief: Uber Files for IPO

Less than a month after Lyft's debut on the stock market, rival ride hailing startup Uber has filed its S-1 documents with U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, setting the stage for the company to go public next month. To be listed in the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol UBER, the company says it posted a net income of US$ 997 million in 2018 against a loss of US$ 1.85 billion. Uber also reported 1.49 billion trips for the quarter ending December 2018, with gross bookings (the full dollar value of an Uber ride, Uber Eats delivery or the amount paid by shippers on Uber freight) of US$ 11.48 billion for the same period. The company revealed in its filings that it paid Google US$ 58 million for using its mapping technology for the period 2016-2018, and that the #DeleteUber movement cost it "hundreds of thousands" of customers. It also named a myriad range of businesses such as Lyft, Ola, Careem (which it acquired last month), Lime, Bird, GrubHub, DoorDash, Deliveroo, Swiggy, Postmates, Zomato, Amazon, Tesla, Apple, and Alphabet's Waymo, among others, as its direct competitors.