Uber at NYSE Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive officer of Uber Inc., center, rings the opening bell during the company's initial public offering (IPO) on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Friday, May 10, 2019. The No. 1 ride-hailing company's shares will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange after it raised $8.1 billion in the biggest U.S. IPO since 2014, pricing shares at $45 each. (Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)

Uber's stock is now for purchase on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “UBER,” as the company aims make the largest IPO by a U.S.-based company since Facebook.

The San Francisco-based ride-hailing giant turned to Cooley and Covington & Burling for legal services related to the long-awaited IPO, with Davis Polk & Wardwell serving as underwriter counsel.

According to Uber's updated IPO prospectus, filed April 26, the three law firms are collecting $5.5 million in legal fees and expenses for the IPO work. The filing also discloses that attorneys at Cooley have a beneficial interest in an aggregate of less than 0.03 percent of Uber's common stock.

With a total of 207 million shares registered, valued at $45 per share, 0.03 percent of Uber's common stock would be valued at $2.79 million.

Uber is selling 180 million shares of its common stock in the IPO, which at $45 a share would allow the company to raise $8.1 billion.

The IPO price, which is near the bottom of its expected price range, gives Uber a market value of almost $74 billion. On a fully diluted basis, including restricted stock units and other shares, Uber has an implied market valuation of $82.4 billion.

Besides Uber's massive IPO, Cooley also grabbed the lead last month on PagerDuty and Zoom's public offerings, each of which generated $1.5 million in legal fees.

Palo Alto-based Cooley, which began asking clients for pre-IPO stock as a matter of course in mid-1999, said it saw a significant uptick in its capital markets practice in the recent year. In a February interview with The Recorder, Cooley's CEO Joseph Conroy said his firm advised on more than 175 public offerings in 2018 and represented banks in about half of those offerings.

Fueled by the increased demand for capital markets work, Cooley reported gross revenue of $1.23 billion last year, an increase of 14.4% from $1.07 billion in 2017. The firm's net income also skyrocketed by nearly 24% to $535.6 million.

Uber's offering is by far the biggest tech IPO so far this year and the largest one on a U.S. exchange since China-based Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s $25 billion global record holder in 2014. The American Lawyer reported in 2014, Alibaba paid $15.8 million in legal fees to law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and other attorneys who advised the e-commerce giant on its IPO.

Uber's rival, Lyft, reported $1.4 million in legal fees and expenses for its IPO in late March. Lyft's stock plummeted about 35 percent since its IPO.

Both ride-hailing companies are unprofitable. In its SEC filings, Uber reported 2018 revenue of $11.27 billion, net income of $997 million and adjusted EBITDA losses of $1.85 billion.

Just a few days before Uber's IPO, thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers stayed off the road, striking for better pay and benefits. The Recorder affiliate Corporate Counsel reported Thursday that Uber has set aside $146 million to $170 million to settle misclassification claims filed by 60,000 U.S. drivers.

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