I'm under the impression this is a totally different class of stock than the $70B valuation round?
Common stock at a $49B valuation is entirely different from preferred stock at a $70B valuation with what I'll assume includes a lot of "fine print" around pro-rata and/or liquidation preferences.
Feels a little clickbait-y to say the valuation took a haircut when we're talking about different classes of stock.
[1] http://kara.allthingsd.com/20090713/facebookers-start-cashin...
This tender was not restricted to common stockholders. Some preferred stockholders, who bought in recent rounds, sold down or flat. Practically nobody, if not absolutely nobody, who tendered common stock to DST in 2009 lost money on their original investment. The same isn’t true with Uber.
Given that the latter shares are being sold by existing stockholders, it doesn't seem fair to call this a down round.
I'd expect their valuation to remain the same.
It's expected that common shares are worth less than preferred shares. After all, the preferred shares could be paid out at value in, e.g. in the event that the company is sold for far less than the current valuation, and the common shares would be worthless.
Probably not. The strike is likely at a much larger discount.
There is a thriving, if shallow, secondary market for the private stock, common or preferred, of companies like Uber.
An investor from March 2016 Series G would have sold, to SoftBank, at a lower price per share than that at which they invested. That’s a haircut.
Pricing for preferred versus common, or even different classes of preferred, does diverge. The degree to which it does reflects proximity to liquidation, amongst other factors. A 30% discount for a late stage company between any two stages of preferred is not healthy nor common (no pun intended).
Not sure why every time a story about people selling Uber stock for less than they bought it this naïve financial interpretation comes out in droves.