Lyft's Fast-Slumping Stock Quickly Leads to Investor Lawsuits

(Bloomberg) -- Snap Inc.’s IPO honeymoon in 2017 gave way to investor lawsuits within 10 weeks. With Blue Apron Holdings it was just seven weeks.

For Lyft Inc., whose stock has tumbled sharply since its March 28 launch, it took less than three weeks for disillusioned shareholders to sue the company over claims they were taken for a ride.

Such lawsuits are a rite of passage for newly public companies, and have become even more common after the 2008 financial crisis, according to Cornerstone Research. Most are dismissed or settle out of court; trials are exceedingly rare.

The standard claim is that the company’s officers and underwriters overhyped its prospects, leading to investor losses when when the truth comes out and the stock tanks.

Lyft was accused in two nearly identical complaints filed April 16 of exaggerating in its prospectus when it said its U.S. market share was 39 percent. In both suits, the plaintiffs also dinged the company for failing to tell investors that it was about to recall more than a 1,000 of the bikes in its ride-share program. Lyft declined to comment on the lawsuits.

Since going public, Lyft has declined 19 percent to $58.36. That compares with the offering price of $72. The stock sold off sharply amid larger rival Uber Technologies Inc.’s filing for an initial public offering April 11, as investors will soon have another option to bet on the potential of ride-sharing and gig-economy.

Experts say that while the first Lyft lawsuits were on the quick side, some companies have been sued even sooner after their IPOs. When Facebook Inc. went public in 2012 and plunged 19 percent over two days after raising $16 billion in the IPO, it was hit within less than a week by a class action on behalf of investors who lost more than $2.5 billion.

“If the bad news comes out very quickly, that is going to cause investors to come out with a lawsuit right away,” said Jay Kesten, an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Law who specializes in corporate finance and security regulation. “That’s what’s going on here.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Peter Blumberg in San Francisco at pblumberg1@bloomberg.net;Robert Burnson in San Francisco at rburnson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg

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