Some Uber employees probably won't see the huge pay day they were dreaming about after the company's wildly anticipated IPO today

Carlo Allegri/Reuters

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

• The value of Uber shares given to some of the company's employees may not be higher when the company launches its initial public offering (IPO) on Friday than it was three years ago, a Bloomberg opinion column written by Shira Ovide notes.
• Citing data from EquityZen, Ovide notes that Uber was valued at around $49 per share in mid-2016.
• The company priced its IPO shares at $45, which falls at the low end of the $44-$50 range it announced in a regulatory filing.
• Shares of Uber were indicated to open at $42 to $43 ahead of the stock listing late Friday morning, below its $45 IPO price.
• Uber opened at $42.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The value of Uber shares given to some of the company's employees may not be higher when the company launches its initial public offering (IPO) on Friday than it was three years ago, a Bloomberg opinion column written by Shira Ovide notes.

Read more: LIVE: Uber is set to begin trading in one of the largest US IPOs on record

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Citing data from EquityZen, Ovide notes that Uber was valued at around $49 per share in mid-2016. The company priced its IPO shares at $45, which falls at the low end of the $44-$50 range it announced in a regulatory filing. Ovide points out that an Uber employee who was hired in 2016 and given a compensation package that included the ability to receive equity if she met tenure and performance-based targets may not have seen the value of that potential incentive rise in the past three years.

Of course, it's easier to sell shares in public markets than in private ones, and Ovide notes that Uber employees are not allowed to sell their shares for the company's first six months on the public markets, so Uber's share price could rise by the time they're allowed to sell.

The company's decision to set a relatively conservative IPO share price may have been a response to Lyft, which saw its share price fall by 36% between the launch of its IPO on March 29 and the end of Thursday.

Uber opened at $42 when its stock began trading Friday morning.

Read Bloomberg's full opinion column here.

• Read more:
• Uber boasts that it awarded $40,000 to any driver who made 40,000 trips. Almost no one would have made the cut.
• Uber's original pitch deck from a decade ago shows just how much the ride-hailing giant has changed
• Uber is going public at a $75.5 billion valuation. Here's how that stacks up.
• Driver protests, bans and fighting with the competition: how Uber and other ride-hailing apps are holding up around the world