After-hours trading was lively on Thursday, thanks to several big developments that played out following the close of markets.
Confirming media reports that were swirling around on Wednesday, Uber (UBER 0.79%) finally priced its upcoming massive initial public offering (IPO). Chevron (CVX 1.31%) exited from a suddenly competitive takeover battle for Anadarko Petroleum (APC +0.00%), and Zillow (Z 1.96%) saw big spikes in post-market volume and price following impressive Q1 results.
Image source: Getty Images.
Uber's price tag
Are you reading this digest while cruising home in the Uber you've called? Well, it turns out the ride will be $45.
That's the per-share price of the company's upcoming IPO, anyway. Following the IPO, the shares will hit the New York Stock Exchange for public trading on Friday.
That $45 figure, alas, was near the floor of the $44 to $50 per-share price range Uber had set earlier. The market's harsh initial reaction to Lyft's IPO earlier this year probably had something to do with the pricing. Another factor might be the round of driver strikes convulsing the industry right now.
Nevertheless, no matter which direction it goes in, Uber's stock is going to see a lot of action over the next few days. Perhaps the shares of top rival Lyft will follow suit. Meanwhile, Lyft's shares were up slightly tonight in after-market trading.
Chevron drops bid for Anadarko
Chevron will not be the owner of oil and gas company Anadarko, after all. In the face of a large offer from Occidental Petroleum, the energy giant announced it would not continue pursuing the acquisition.
Last month, Chevron offered a mix of cash and stock amounting to roughly $65 per share at the time for Anadarko. But subsequently, Occidental swooped in with its muscular $76 cash-and-stock bid. Anadarko investors surely hoped for a stock-swelling buyout war, but it didn't happen.
This disappointment seemed faintly evident in post-market trading: Anadarko shares dipped slightly, while those of Chevron and Occidental rose marginally.
In an official press release on its retreat, Chevron quoted its CEO Michael Wirth as saying: "[W]inning in any environment doesn't mean winning at any cost. Cost and capital discipline always matter, and we will not dilute our returns or erode value for our shareholders for the sake of doing a deal."
Zillow blasts past estimates
Will the U.S. real estate market ever cool down? If we go by the just announced Q1 2019 results of online brokerage Zillow, the answer's a resounding no!
For the quarter, the company reaped $454 million in revenue, a whopping 51% improvement over the Q1 2018 figure. On the bottom line, though, the company's net loss deepened to almost $68 million from the year-ago tally of $19 million. Yet on a per-share basis, this was a loss of $0.33, slightly better than the $0.35 loss expected by analysts.
All of Zillow's business units posted higher revenue. It particularly singled out Zillow Offers, a recently introduced efficiency service in which the company buys a domicile directly from a client. It then turns around and sells it, pocketing a fee for the service.
Zillow was a winner in both both volume and price-appreciation terms in after-hours trading. Its share price has risen almost 18% in post-market action as of the time of this writing (6:39 p.m. EDT).
