Is Uber really a $120 billion company?

Vanity Fair says there are signals that Uber could go public as soon as 2019, and the company could offer the biggest payout since Facebook in 2012. The Wall Street Journal reported that even Uber’s most recent valuation of $72 billion is just a fraction of its potential value as a public company.

However, Uber isn’t turning a profit and The Wall Street Journal doesn’t expect that to happen for another three years. In this article, Vanity Fair cited research from Cordell Eminent Scholar Jay R. Ritter to show how frequently companies listed without being profitable in the year before their IPO.