• Mr. Khosrowshahi’s stake could be worth just $9.8 million.
… but its senior executives miss out
Uber’s transformation from a founder-led, private company into a publicly traded company started in 2017 after Mr. Kalanick stepped down as C.E.O. That means that its top leadership is all relatively new, and owns little of the company.
So Uber offered I.P.O.-related bonuses to incentivize its senior executives. The company’s offering prospectus explained that Mr. Khosrowshahi and at least four other executives stood to receive equity awards that would have vested if the I.P.O. valued Uber at $120 billion, including restricted stock and stock options, and maintained that valuation for 90 days.
That now seems unlikely. But don’t feel too sorry for them:
• Mr. Khosrowshahi received about $45.3 million in compensation last year.
• Barney Harford, Uber’s chief operating officer, had a pay package of $47.3 million.
• Nelson Chai, who joined Uber in September as its chief financial officer, received compensation of $28 million.
What everyone’s saying about the I.P.O.
“Uber is a growth business whose largest business stopped growing, at least for now,” Shira Ovide of Bloomberg Opinion writes, referring to the fact that the total value of rides it provided in the first quarter of 2019 actually fell by 1 percent compared to the previous quarter. “Now that Uber’s main business has reached a plateau, investors in Uber’s I.P.O. will essentially be betting that the company can find more markets to conquer.”
“The road to profitability and lasting shareholder value is hard to discern,” Richard Beales of Breakingviews writes. “It is still splashing out on fast-growing Uber Eats and the newer Uber Freight trucking business, to name a couple of areas. But it’s not obvious the heavy investment will ever pay off.”
“In some markets, Uber is starting in a hole, paying more to drivers to complete a trip than the customer pays for the ride,” Lauren Silva Laughlin of the WSJ notes. Those payments are designed to incentivize workers to join its platform, and should disappear as Uber becomes dominant. But “these fees are growing not shrinking,” notes Ms. Laughlin.
