BUMPY START

Uber Stock Falls More Than 7 Percent on First Day of Highly Anticipated IPO Debut

“We knew we’d have a volatile day ahead of us,” a chief executive said.

Uber began trading on the New York Stock Exchange Friday, but by the end of the day, the company’s stock closed 7.6 percent below its initial price, a rare first-day decline for a high-profile IPO. The price closed at $41.57, significantly below its initial offering of $45, which gives Uber a valuation of roughly $76 billion. It’s a bad start for the ride-sharing company, which took a conservative strategy in pricing to entice buyers. Friday’s trading shows that the strategy may not have been conservative enough.

Lyft, Uber’s biggest rival, also had disappointing results after going public in March. “We knew we’d have a volatile day ahead of us,” Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal after trading began. “(Uber is) a company that has been through a ton of volatility in its history, and we’ve always come through.”