Uber’s valuation started dropping following the departure of the company’s now-former Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, with some of the firm’s investors marking down their stakes in the San Francisco, California-based ride-hailing giant, recent filings have shown. Four mutual fund companies with stakes in Uber Technologies have dropped their estimated investments by up to 15 percent, though the firm is still considered to be the most valuable startup in the world which was recently estimated at close to $70 billion. T. Rowe Price Group reduced its estimated price of Uber’s (unlisted) shares by over 12 percentage points and now values them at $42.73, according to some of its filings pertaining to the second quarter of the year. Principal Funds, Vanguard Group, and Hartford Funds slashed their valuations of Uber stock for the three-month period ending June 30 in an even more aggressive manner, putting them at $41.46 per share, down by 15 percent compared to the previous quarter.
None of the four companies have yet issued a comment on the matter in any capacity and they still represent a minority of Uber’s investors, with many of them maintaining their estimated valuations of the company in Q2 2017. The ride-hailing service provider was last valued at $68 billion in 2016, though a number of industry analysts now believe that figure to be somewhat doubtful in light of various issues that have been troubling the company in the last year. Uber is still involved in a high-profile legal case with Alphabet’s Waymo which accused its former self-driving head Anthony Levandowski of stealing trade secrets while he was still working for Google and later utilizing them in Uber’s own autonomous creations. Those allegations followed shortly after the company’s supposedly predatory corporate culture was harshly criticized by some of its former employees who claimed that Mr. Kalanick didn’t do enough to prevent it.
Uber’s co-founder is currently facing a legal battle of his own, with one of the tech giant’s largest and earliest investors accusing him of defrauding the Board of Directors and seeking to cancel three board seats at the company, including the one held by Mr. Kalanick himself in a move that he described as “a personal attack.” Uber is currently still in the process of searching for a new CEO which it hopes will help the company bounce back from its recent issues, with its search being expected to be concluded by fall.