With all the turmoil inside Uber, it’s unlikely that miffed shareholders will get an offer that’s close to Uber’s current valuation, one technology investor said.
Uber’s not worth the nearly $70 billion it’s valued at now, and could be worth tens of billions of dollars less, technology investor Roger McNamee told CNBC’s “Squawk Alley” on Tuesday.
McNamee’s comments come as one of Uber’s oldest investors, Benchmark, is suing former CEO Travis Kalanick. Kalanick, who has stepped down as CEO, led the company amid a slew of scandals, including sexual harassment allegations and an intellectual property lawsuit.
Uber is entertaining investment offers from investors such as Softbank, Dragoneer Investment Group and a consortium led by Shervin Pishevar of Sherpa Capital, The New York Times reported over the weekend. But Benchmark has blocked those attempts so far, sources told CNBC. Benchmark invested $27 million in Uber, a 13 percent stake in the company, last valued at nearly $70 billion, the lawsuit claims.
All the drama within the company shows how Uber was an extension of Kalanick’s personality, McNamee said. (Kalanick has said he’s baffled and disappointed by the suit.)
“I understand the Benchmark position. I think they know Kalanick better than a lot of the other board members do,” said McNamee, who has invested in companies such as Yelp and Facebook through Elevation Partners. “Somebody may give them a proposal that looks like its worth $70 billion. But I will bet you anything that when the dust settles, when you unwrap the layers, it’s worth way, way, way less than that. This company is not worth anything like that price … the market will make that decision.”
Uber has been accused of deceptive privacy practices and has been investigated for a software tool called “greyballing” that allegedly misled authorities.
“It made them appear to be incredibly successful — they raised a lot of money,” McNamee said. “Now it appears that, ‘Oh, wait a minute. All of that was at least not acceptable. And some of it may actually have been really, really bad.'”
— CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa and Sally Shin contributed to this report.
Source: Tech CNBC
There's no way Uber is worth anything near billion, tech investor says