Uber Is Said to Pick NYSE for 2019 Mega IPO

Uber has selected the New York Stock Exchange for its imminent initial public offering, according to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The ride-hailing giant is expected to publicly file for its offering in April, kicking off a listing that could value the company at as much as $120 billion and is likely to be the biggest of the year, people familiar with the plans have said previously. At that valuation, Uber would only have to float about 16 percent of its shares to make the top five biggest listings of all time.

By selecting the iconic trading floor in the heart of Wall Street, Uber is diverging from rival Lyft, which will start trading next week on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Many technology giants, including Google, Microsoft and Apple trade on Nasdaq, which was once the dominant exchange for tech upstarts going public. Since a technical glitch dogged Facebook’s Nasdaq listing seven years ago, the NYSE has attracted large tech companies including Alibaba’s record $25 billion in 2014 offering, Twitter’s 2013 IPO and Snap’s debut in 2017.

It doesn’t hurt that Uber’s CFO Nelson Chai once served as the finance chief of the NYSE, and Uber board member John Thain served as its CEO from 2004 to 2007. Lyft and Uber’s race to market has created a similar dynamic to 2014, when Chinese e-commerce rivals Alibaba and JD.com went public within months of each other. JD, the smaller company by far, chose Nasdaq, while Alibaba opted for NYSE.