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Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

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Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#221

Post by bob_theslob646 »

mratzloff wrote: post #67
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #62

> Uber Technologies Inc.’s net loss widened to $1.46 billion in the third quarter, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as the ride-hailing leader struggled to fend off competition, legal challenges and regulatory scrutiny. "according to people with knowledge of the matter.." How is reporting like this legal? Is this not speculation? It baffles me that no fact checking/ benchmarking exists for such a maj…

It's strange to me that you assume that just because sources aren't named in public that no fact checking occurred. As far as legality, there is a system in place; if it's false, it's handled in civil court.

>It's strange to me that you assume that just because sources aren't named in public that no fact checking occurred.

It's hard to take things seriously when people/organizations do not take/put skin in the game.

From a risk perspective it is genuis, but from a readers perspective it is problematic in my opinion.( I am not a fan of gossip)

What's stranger to me is how you assume that they fact check....

For all I know they do, but it defeats the purpose of confidentiality agreements if sources speak up when they are explicitly told not too. (I am referring to confidential finance contracts)

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#222

Post by bob_theslob646 »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #168
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really the idea? Do you know how large the ride hailing market is? I am almost positive the point of subsidizing the price of the rides is to get you addicted/ build up a habit or get you comfortable using the service. I think they are aware of the competition and are comfortable owning 60+% versus trying to get 80%+. Their revenue is growing which is still wild despite bad press. >Unfortunately their competi…

> I think they are aware of the competition and are comfortable owning 60+% versus trying to get 80%+. While in reality, their overall share of the ride-hailing + taxi market in the US is ~25% as of August 2017, and far less in Europe and Asia.

>While in reality, their overall share of the ride-hailing + taxi market in the US is ~25% as of August 2017, and far less in Europe and Asia.

You don't know what you are talking about.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.recode.net/platform/amp/201...

>That week, Uber’s market share dropped 5 percentage points compared with the previous week, from 81 percent to 76 percent, according to Second Measure data. Lyft’s market share gained about the same amount that week. Other ride-sharing companies, including Gett and Juno, saw a nominal increase that week.

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#223

Post by fstuff »

DannyBee wrote: post #65
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo won't bankrupt Uber. If Uber loses, they will appeal. Uber will run out of runway for other reasons before they're done with the appeal. What a loss to Waymo might do is make an Uber IPO much less attractive. It might even be the difference between an IPO happening and not happening. And that might be the difference between Uber getting another year or two of runway and them dying in 2018.

"Waymo won't bankrupt Uber. If Uber loses, they will appeal. " So? They'd almost certainly be forced to put up a very large bond to do that, assuming they can get it. In some jurisdictions, this can be 100% of judgement + interest. IIRC, in the 9th circuit, it's at the discretion of district courts, but given the financial situation, if they did have a multi-billion judgement against them, and not a lot of runway, wh…

If they lose they could be forced shut down they're AV research. I don't think the judge would let them continue using waymo's tech while uber appeals

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#224

Post by rtpg »

bwilliams18 wrote: post #162
andrewem wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their revenues are in the billions per year, and so their investors would be looking for new revenues in the billions. The assumption that there's an untapped multi-billion dollar market for logistics software that they could quickly dominate - quickly enough to avoid running out of money - seems unwarranted.

There's an enormous opportunity in UberEATS if they can get the unit economics right. They could also retreat into already profitable markets .

I've used UberEATS a couple times, but after figuring out that it's basically impossible for delivery people to make much real money off of it I feel really bad.

Not sure if the unit economics can ever work out.

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#225

Post by bob_theslob646 »

tragic wrote: post #82
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #62

> Uber Technologies Inc.’s net loss widened to $1.46 billion in the third quarter, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as the ride-hailing leader struggled to fend off competition, legal challenges and regulatory scrutiny. "according to people with knowledge of the matter.." How is reporting like this legal? Is this not speculation? It baffles me that no fact checking/ benchmarking exists for such a maj…

This sort of formulation is extremely common in all kinds of news reporting. Journalists frequently have recourse to anonymous sources - so frequent that there are strong journalistic ethical injunctions against exposing such sources. Deep Throat was 'a person familiar with the matter'.

>so frequent that there are strong journalistic ethical injunctions against exposing such sources.

Ethical injuctions? Lol, yeah if maybe the industry was not based off of advertising as a primary source of revenue. The way that it currently stands getting those clicks/eyeballe is way more important than ethics.

Journalism is dead in the United States.

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#226

Post by bob_theslob646 »

alasdair_ wrote: post #154
bob_theslob646 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really the idea? Do you know how large the ride hailing market is? I am almost positive the point of subsidizing the price of the rides is to get you addicted/ build up a habit or get you comfortable using the service. I think they are aware of the competition and are comfortable owning 60+% versus trying to get 80%+. Their revenue is growing which is still wild despite bad press. >Unfortunately their competi…

>Their revenue is growing which is still wild despite bad press. Not really. The revenue for a company selling dollar bills for 80c each will keep increasing until all the cash is gone as well.

>Not really. The revenue for a company selling dollar bills for 80c each will keep increasing until all the cash is gone as well.

The rides that I have taken are not subsidized. Maybe it's not statistically significant but I have yet to see the subsidy in the major cities that I have traveled in.

SoftBank obviously sees something in them.

Who knows. I don't disagree with what you said.

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#227

Post by fstuff »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #105
mrgordon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have around 12,000 employees according to Wikipedia (and a few other sources show a similar figure). If we figure the average employee is 250,000/year in liabilities on the balance sheet (salary + benefits + options/RSUs) then thats $3 billion a year in employee expenses. I don't think $250k is too unrealistic considering the massive capital gains many employees must have on paper as well as the high level of ta…

Uber has a lot of Operations staff all around the world who are getting faaar less than $250K a year (even if you add everything in the kitchen sink to reach the compensation number). And by faar I mean an order of magnitude less. Other than engineering they also have a lot of people going around mapping cities, QAing those maps etc.

Most operational staff are hourly workers who don't get paid anywhere near what a engineer gets and hourly works usually don't get RSUs. You have to consider the 1000s people working on city ops, support, their insurance ops teams are huge, in the US alone they probably have 1 to 2k of people in support roles. Only salaried employees garner the big pay which is guess is less than half the company.

Ps... you'd crap your pants if you knew how many contractors they have doing operations work. Their mostly in low cost counties like the Philippines, and Brazil. Nothing about support scales with growth.

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#228

Post by rconti »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #222
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they are aware of the competition and are comfortable owning 60+% versus trying to get 80%+. While in reality, their overall share of the ride-hailing + taxi market in the US is ~25% as of August 2017, and far less in Europe and Asia.

>While in reality, their overall share of the ride-hailing + taxi market in the US is ~25% as of August 2017, and far less in Europe and Asia. You don't know what you are talking about. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.recode.net/platform/amp/201... >That week, Uber’s market share dropped 5 percentage points compared with the previous week, from 81 percent to 76 percent, according to Second Measure data. Lyft’s marke…

I'm assuming the difference is the +taxi component in the calculations.

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#229

Post by rconti »

smeyer wrote: post #100
dalbasal wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens to stock which isn't part of the IPO? Ie, all the stock owned by employees, investors, etc? Does it become instantly tradeable? I would imagine that considering the long road, a lot of people are really ready to sell. There are lots of owners that will have achieved 50X or more return, even at a low market cap. Former employees with option strike prices @ £20m, early investors that got in @ £150m.... Tha…

There are lockup periods that prevent them selling. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answer/12/ipo-lockup-period... >For example, Facebook's IPO lock up prevented the sale of 271 million shares during the company's first three months of public ownership. FB hit an all-time low of $19.69 the day its first lock-up period ended, a price about 50% lower than the share price on the day the company went public. Further res…

All the more reason to quit just before the IPO! (assuming they own the shares)

Re: Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

#230

Post by hrasyid »

bob_theslob646 wrote: post #226
alasdair_ wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Their revenue is growing which is still wild despite bad press. Not really. The revenue for a company selling dollar bills for 80c each will keep increasing until all the cash is gone as well.

>Not really. The revenue for a company selling dollar bills for 80c each will keep increasing until all the cash is gone as well. The rides that I have taken are not subsidized. Maybe it's not statistically significant but I have yet to see the subsidy in the major cities that I have traveled in. SoftBank obviously sees something in them. Who knows. I don't disagree with what you said.

> The rides that I have taken are not subsidized. Maybe it's not statistically significant but I have yet to see the subsidy in the major cities that I have traveled in.

How do you know that?

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