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The Morning Ledger: Uber IPO Will Be Shaped by CFO’s Choices |
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Ride-hailing firm Uber and rival Lyft are expected to go public in 2019. PHOTO: MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS
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Good day. Uber Technologies Inc.’s finance chief will play a critical numbers game as the ride-hailing service races toward an initial public offering riding a potential valuation of $120 billion, reports CFO Journal's Tatyana Shumsky.
Show me the money: Central to the IPO will be the metrics Nelson Chai, who became Uber’s chief financial officer last month, chooses to justify what some experts consider a lofty valuation for a company that doesn’t expect to be profitable for at least three years. Mr. Chai’s targets for revenue and rider growth and other performance indicators will set the benchmark for how Wall Street tracks a company which sold its first-ever bonds earlier this week.
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No time like the present: Mr. Chai won’t have the luxury of time to deliberate because of the uniquely competitive nature of this offering, according to finance chiefs with IPO experience. Uber’s biggest U.S. competitor Lyft Inc. is also angling to go public, meaning both companies could be presenting to underwriters and investors almost simultaneously.
Expanding valuation: The $120 billion Uber valuation floated by bankers is a leap from its most recent funding round, which valued the company at $76 billion. The new figure likely includes as much as $20 billion in cash that Uber and its current backers will raise from the public market, said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida.
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Honeywell International Inc., Kansas City Southern and Procter & Gamble Co. are among the companies scheduled to report earnings today.
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Coca-Cola Names Company Veteran as New CFO in Leadership Shuffle |
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A parking attendant helps a guest outside Coca-Cola’s headquarters in Atlanta., Ga. PHOTO: DAVID BARNES/ZUMA PRES
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Coca-Cola Co., which is attempting to keep pace with increasingly health-conscious consumers, named a new finance chief Thursday amid plans for current CFO and company veteran Kathy Waller to retire next year.
Ms. Waller, who has been at the center of the Atlanta-based company’s push in recent years to expand beyond sugary soft drinks, is scheduled to retire in March.
Ms. Waller joined Coca-Cola in 1987 as a senior accountant and has had to balance cost-cutting with the company’s drive to innovate new products during her tenure as CFO. She rose to the post in 2014.
She will be succeeded by John Murphy, who is currently president of Coke’s Asia Pacific group. Mr. Murphy has worked in a number of finance, strategy and operational roles since joining the company in 1988.
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Amazon has revisited several cities over the past couple of months, including Chicago. PHOTO: SAUL LOEB/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Amazon.com Inc. executives have made a fresh round of visits to several of the 20 finalists for its $5 billion second-headquarters project, fueling added anticipation as it nears a decision in a process that has stretched over more than a year.
Two of the world’s largest consumer-goods companies, Unilever PLC and Nestlé SA, reported stronger sales as a wave of inflation in many markets emboldened them to raise prices.
DowDuPont Inc.’s agriculture unit is taking a $4.6 billion charge in the third quarter after the business lowered its long-term expectations on sales and profits, a move that underscores challenges agribusinesses are facing in the Americas.
Invesco Ltd. agreed to buy rival Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.’s OppenheimerFunds Inc. unit for $5.7 billion, adding to a string of acquisitions that have transformed the firm into a $1 trillion money manager.
PayPal Holdings Inc. exceeded analysts’ earnings estimates, suggesting it’s making progress toward monetizing Venmo, the mobile-payments service, Bloomberg reports.
Data-mining giant Palantir Technologies Inc., one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive companies, is weighing an initial public offering likely to be among the largest in recent years, people familiar with the matter said.
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New rules could require oceangoing commercial ships to use low-sulfur fuel starting in 2020. Above, the Port of Long Beach in California. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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The Trump administration is pushing to ease the rollout of new international rules to power commercial ships with environmentally cleaner fuels, fearing the measures will drive up costs for consumers and businesses.
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The country’s biggest stock exchanges are on a losing streak in Washington. One example is the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision this week to block the exchanges from raising fees on some data products.
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An escalating battle between the U.S. and China for supremacy in semiconductor technology is playing out in federal court between Huawei Technologies Co. and a Silicon Valley startup backed by Microsoft Corp. and Dell Technologies Inc.
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Banks on Thursday pushed back on how regulators are attempting to simplify rules prohibiting banks from trading on their own account, Reuters reports.
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U.S. sanctions intended to squeeze an Iranian paramilitary force may have unintended consequences for humanitarian efforts in the country because of its targeting of a bank, lawyers and analysts say.
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Workers checked optical fibers at a factory in China’s eastern Jiangsu province on Oct. 17. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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China’s economic expansion slowed to 6.5% in the third quarter, its weakest pace since the financial crisis, as top financial regulators launched an extraordinary coordinated effort to calm jittery investors.
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Rising crude oil inventories and increased output in the U.S. could push oil prices down in the coming weeks, an internal OPEC report said Thursday.
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U.S. manufacturing activity continued to grow in the mid-Atlantic region in October, as firms reported continued increases in employment and the average workweek.
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CBS Corp., a New York-based media company, named Christina Spade finance chief, effective immediately. Ms. Spade rises to fill the CFO position from Showtime Networks Inc., a CBS subsidiary where she has spent more than 22 years, most recently serving as its finance chief.
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Prior to joining Showtime, Ms. Spade was an audit manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in the entertainment, media and communications practice. Compensation details were not released.
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Every weekend we select a handful of in-depth articles we think are worth a bit of your time, either because they peel back the layers on a compelling business story or somehow make us look at business in a different light.
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Barley, the key ingredient in malt for beer, is particularly vulnerable to the extreme droughts and heat waves that are expected to become more frequent due to climate change, Wired Magazine reports.
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With the Chinese believing their time on the global stage has come, that spells trouble for American manufacturers with global supply chains, writes Harvard Business Review.
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Chinese customers are increasingly looking to Europe and South America to fill their orders for pork. The shift raises the prospect of not just a short-term hiccup for American hog farmers, but a fundamental realignment in the global supply chain in one of the world’s hungriest markets, The Wall Street Journal reports.
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