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On Thursday morning, 鈥攖he smaller half of America鈥檚 ride-hailing duopoly鈥攃onfidentially filed a draft S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to from the company.

At this time, the proposed price range and number of shares to be offered are still being decided, according to Lyft. Its release says that the IPO is expected to start 鈥渁fter the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions.鈥� It鈥檚 widely expected that Lyft shares will make their public market debut during the first half of 2019.

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Filing this paperwork is among the first official steps private companies take to raise money from public markets in an initial public offering (IPO). The 2012 Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act created a path for smaller companies (those with $1 billion or less in revenue) to quietly file IPO paperwork with the regulator, but starting in July 2018 all companies are now able to file draft S-1 paperwork confidentially. That鈥檚 what Lyft has done here, but the company will have to update its paperwork at least 15 days before soliciting investment during a pre-IPO 鈥渞oad show.鈥�

Since its inception in May 2012, Lyft has raised . Its most recent outside funding, closed this past June, valued the company $15.1 billion post-money.

Lyft has raised money from venture investors including , , , , and .1 Corporate investors in the ride-hailing company include (the growth equity fund backed by Google鈥檚 parent company, Alphabet), Japanese ecommerce site , , , and Chinese transportation behemoth .

In October, our EIC Alex Wilhelm wrote about how a Lyft IPO could value the company at more than $15 billion compared to an estimated valuation of $120 billion for its chief rival, . He also pointed out that both companies are 鈥渄eeply unprofitable,鈥� with Lyft being even more unprofitable than Uber at least on a percent-of-revenue basis.

Here鈥檚 some financials from the first half of the year that Alex put together:

• H1鈥�18 revenue: $909 million.
• H1鈥�18 revenue growth from H1鈥�17: 120.6 percent.
• H1鈥�18 net loss: $373 million.
• Net margin: -41.4 percent.

If you assume that Lyft earns about the same amount of revenue in the second half of 2018 as it did in the first half, its revenue for the year would total $1.82 billion. By Alex鈥檚 calculations, Lyft, at $15 billion is worth just 8.3 times more than that. And its ambitious IPO valuation would be around 6.9 times its 2018 revenue.

Uber too is expected to go public in the relatively near future. Media that the company, according to bankers, could be worth as much as $120 billion鈥�a figure that was much higher than Uber鈥檚 own private valuations. This is a company that lost $1.375 billion in the first half of 2018. 2

The competitors have somewhat been in a race to see who will file an IPO first. And let鈥檚 face it, the performance and pricing of one will almost certainly affect the performance and pricing of the other.

Given how much capital Lyft and its ilk are still burning, it鈥檒l be interesting to see how securities regulators and, eventually, public market investors, react when shares finally hit Wall Street. VCs have been able to hold their nose at the cash fire so far, but will everyone else?

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