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Some thoughts on $LYFT IPO:
Basics all seem pretty impressive and what you might expect from a tech startup that has emerged as one of the major ‘unicorn’ success stories of the last five years. Huge revenue growth, rider growth, rides growth and revenue per rider growth too. 
With competition for market share and the need to continue its aggressive expansion still a key part of strategy, it seems highly unlikely that Lyft will be profitable anytime soon. Doesn't really matter though in the grand scheme of things.
One of two major concerns are over its lack of an international presence, while Uber has built itself into a global company already. On its website Uber reports that it is already in 461 cities outside of North America, most of which have been established as much as 5 years ago
Lyft's lack of international presence will inevitably hurt the company in its domestic market, as customers will be forced to use Lyft’s competitors whenever they travel outside of the US, or those from overseas come to the US. Missing out on a key, high spending cohort
Second risk is that Lyft's costs and expenses continue to rise a rapid rate, fueled mostly by cost of revenue, which primarily consists of insurance costs required by city regulations for ridesharing. No chance this slows anytime soon
The key will then be to offset this higher spending with more revenues coming in and a higher take rate from bookings. Revenues as a percentage of bookings, the amount riders pay, reached 26.8% in 2018 and it is unclear how much higher this number can go without drivers defecting
Would love to see Uber's revenue breakdown for its US market vs Intl markets, as well as UberEats. For now, its topline revenue is roughly 4 times more than Lyft's and growing at a strong rate when these higher base effects are taken into consideration
Bottom line: none of that matters for the short-term though (next year or two) as investors will overlook net losses and longer term risks. People are going to pile in for $LYFT, drawn in by high growth and a functioning business model.
