Here comes Lyft… (LYFT)

Lyft, the first ride-hailing company to hit the public market, is set to begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
Lyft priced its initial public offering at $72 the evening prior, giving the company a valuation of around $21 billion.
Several Wall Street analysts are already bullish on the world’s second-largest ride-share company.

Lyft, the first ride-hailing company to launch on a US public market, is set to begin trading on Friday morning under the ticker symbol "LYFT."

The company priced its initial public offering at $72 per share the evening prior, at the upper-end of its expected range, giving it a valuation of about $21 billion.

Lyft’s offering itself is expected to raise around $2.69 billion.

Investors’ appetite for Lyft’s publicly traded shares has proved strong heading into its highly anticipated debut despite the company providing no clear timeline for reaching profitability.

Lyft earlier this week raised its expected IPO range from between $62 and $68 a share to $70 to $72 after its offering was oversubscribed. In other words, demand for its IPO exceeded the number of shares issued.

In the race to go public during what’s expected to be a banner year for high-profile IPOs — with Airbnb, Slack, and Peloton all expected to debut — Lyft is set to beat out rival Uber to the public markets.

"In our opinion while Lyft has clearly benefited from some of the negative PR issues that Uber faced in 2017/early 2018, going forward the battle for market share will be a bit more balanced," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to clients earlier this week.

Ives initiated coverage on the name with a "neutral" investment rating and a 12-month $80 price target.

Now read more markets coverage from Markets Insider and Business Insider:

NOW WATCH: The founder and CIO of $12 billion Ariel Investments breaks down how his top-ranked flagship fund has crushed its peers over the past 10 years