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Uber Q2 financials

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Re: Uber Q2 financials

#21

Post by josephmerz »

tmh79 wrote: post #12
gremlinsinc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there will be a big pivot from car ownership to rentals... maybe add up insurance, maintenance, and leasing fees to get to $600-1000 a month for unlimited car-service. Automated cars will be summoned by phone, arrive when you schedule them, and go pick up others when not needed.. Pretty sure a lot of the car companies are planning something like this, I know tesla is. Uber wants to hold out till their self-dr…

> I think uber's in a death spin, not sure it can pull out. that is not evidenced at all in their financials though. Their losses are down and their revenue is up. They are doing exactly what is expected of them if they hope to be profitable in the next 18 months or so.

Really can't see them profitable in 18 months. At least Musk's focus is on product for all parties. Uber only cares about scaling

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#22

Post by tmh79 »

debacle wrote: post #15
cloudwalking wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, for example, Uber crushes all competition, then they can raise fares and lower partner payments and make a bigger profit.

Every time Uber scores a municipal victory, they're lowering the barrier to entry for competitors.

not necessarily true. Uber is developing relationships with the regulators in all of their markets, a highly local endeavor. It's possible, even likely, that they are going to use these relationships to their own advantage when launching self driving cars in different markets.

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#23

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

I'm interested in how the tipping will enable Uber to really focus drivers on service. Tips are likely to be a pretty strong indicator for what customers want, and may be optimized by Uber should they choose to do so. I assume that 100% of the tip amount goes to the driver, but is that actually true? Uber does have an expense in adding the feature to it's app & operation.

Uber will collect a lot of data that they can share with drivers regarding what they can do to increase tips. Basics like keep a clean car, or how much to chat with customers, or perhaps even customer-specific services like 'don't speed at all', or 'get out and open the door' for them, or, 'likes the car temp at 80 degrees...'.

Moreover, it can indicate what cities or localities tip best, what time of day, what types of people tip well, ...

I am trying to think of another platform better suited to recording this type of data, but it's not coming to mind. Will Uber use it to benefit customers and drivers, or, abuse it for it's own gain?

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#24

Post by josephmerz »

onion2k wrote: post #9
forthefuture wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to a layman how a company losing $600M every 3 months, with $6B remaining of $12B raised (50% loss over 8 years) is "worth" $62B?

The long term goal for Uber is to build a global monopoly of self-driving taxis in a world where no one owns their own car. That would be worth trillions . For a long time they looked like they might manage it, but things haven't been going well lately. The latest valuation doesn't factor that in.

Maybe if they were the only ones working on autonomous vehicles plus they may not come out well liked... it's not looking like they will in my opinion

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#25

Post by NHCOCAMA »

mbesto wrote: post #18
bousaid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my biggest wonder, how can the economics change for the better?

Simple - autonomous vehicles. It's the single largest line item of COGS. Reduce a COGS line by let's say 25% for revenues of $10B and you all of the sudden have another $2.5B in extra profit. EDIT - I totally simplified that math (and it reads odd as stated), but you get the point.

Autonomous is has need been the answer to me. It has always seemed like a way to raise more money using the latest fad. With autonomous you have massive up front capital costs and then you have to hire staff to service the cars.

Also, city and state regulators are not even close to allowing massive fleets loose on the roadways. Uber will need 5+ years of burn or positive cash flow before they can even begin to rely on autonomous cars and that is only in easy to navigate dense cities of the world.

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#26

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 »

cloudwalking wrote: post #8
bousaid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my biggest wonder, how can the economics change for the better?

If, for example, Uber crushes all competition, then they can raise fares and lower partner payments and make a bigger profit.

Raising fares would open more opportunities for competitors to enter the space.

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#27

Post by ShinTakuya »

josephmerz wrote: post #24
onion2k wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long term goal for Uber is to build a global monopoly of self-driving taxis in a world where no one owns their own car. That would be worth trillions . For a long time they looked like they might manage it, but things haven't been going well lately. The latest valuation doesn't factor that in.

Maybe if they were the only ones working on autonomous vehicles plus they may not come out well liked... it's not looking like they will in my opinion

Even if they don't get the first self driving vehicles on the market they're still in the best position to partner with whoever does and make slightly less but still a fuck tonne of money.

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#28

Post by malandrew »

WisNorCan wrote: post #2

“Uber had $6.6 billion in cash at quarter's end, down from around $7.2 billion at the end of Q1 ... Uber's global ride-share business was margin positive last quarter, which is a flip from Q1.” Uber is on a loss run rate of $2.4 billion annually mainly from the US market. The questions become: * Given that global is positive, what is the loss in US? What will it take to flip US to positive? What will Lyft do? * Can U…

You can't just extrapolate out to 2.4B. Just one quarter ago, that same extrapolation would have been more than 2.8B. They are improving their efficiency while increasing their revenues. I wouldn't be surprised if that loss run rate is $2.0B flat by end of Q4 while gross revenues continue to rise.

Lyft on the other hand has losses almost twice as high as Uber's relative to gross bookings. People accuse Uber of buying market share, but the truth is that Lyft is the one actually buying market share instead of earning it.

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#29

Post by malandrew »

onion2k wrote: post #9
forthefuture wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to a layman how a company losing $600M every 3 months, with $6B remaining of $12B raised (50% loss over 8 years) is "worth" $62B?

The long term goal for Uber is to build a global monopoly of self-driving taxis in a world where no one owns their own car. That would be worth trillions . For a long time they looked like they might manage it, but things haven't been going well lately. The latest valuation doesn't factor that in.

I find it fascinating that people talk about self-driving cars as though it were a binary thing, like either you have an entire fleet of them or you don't and that this happens in all markets all at the same time.

Any proper analysis would consider the myriad ways things play out depending on how gradual and uneven self driving cars will come to market.

And even if L5 were available tomorrow, it would have to be cheap enough on a unit basis manufacturable at scale to compete with driver income plus cost of a Prius over 3-4 years. In the US the unit economics might already be in favor of an L5 vehicle, but in developing markets that may not yet be the case. Furthermore, you don't just replace entire fleets to service entire economies over night.

And even at that point, you need to build out all the infrastructure to support and maintain these vehicles.

Gradual changes always favor the incumbents if the incumbent is aware of such changes and planning for them.

Re: Uber Q2 financials

#30

Post by malandrew »

josephmerz wrote: post #21
tmh79 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think uber's in a death spin, not sure it can pull out. that is not evidenced at all in their financials though. Their losses are down and their revenue is up. They are doing exactly what is expected of them if they hope to be profitable in the next 18 months or so.

Really can't see them profitable in 18 months. At least Musk's focus is on product for all parties. Uber only cares about scaling

And Tesla can't scale.

There are just over a billion vehicles in the world today. Tesla can produce like 20k per month.

Assuming 3/4s of those vehicles are consumer vehicles and we need 1/3 as many vehicles to service the transportation needs of humanity, that's 250M autonomous vehicles.

It would take 1000 years for Tesla to replace the current fleet. Toyota and Volkswagen, the largest automakers can produce 10M units per year. Assuming either had a monopoly on self-driving cars, it would take either of them 25 years.

Manufacturers like Volkswagen and Toyota are going to have autonomous vehicles faster than Tesla builds out the capacity to manufacture 10 million cars per year. Tesla would need to buy or partner with one of the big automakers to accelerate their growth, and even then they will be constrained by the cost of cooperation and scaling battery manufacturing.

Software and hardware tech licensing is going to be the name of the game and if you have both those and represent the demand (riders), you're easily in the lead.

Don't get me wrong, Tesla is going to do very well for itself. It just doesn't stand a chance competing head to head against Uber all things considered.

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