Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lyft Files S-1

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 405 posts

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#91

Post by the_watcher »

geezerjay wrote: post #72
phamilton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100M/year is ~8M/month. Some perspective on that, it could by you one of: ~400PB of data in S3. ~2600 bare metal "x1 type" ec2 instances running 24/7, 3 year upfront reservation. ~60M Write IOPS in dynamodb ~300M Read IOPS in dynamodb ~3500 16xl RDS aurora instances Again, each of those is spending the entire budget on a single service, but that seems like a nonsense level of spending. Maybe they really have that muc…

At this point isn't it cost-effective for Lyft to just build its own infrastructure?

Possibly, but if they don't have any of their own infra, they'd need to pay someone like AWS while they build it out, right?

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#92

Post by AimForTheBushes »

morningmoon wrote: post #46

"We have incurred net losses each year since our inception and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We incurred net losses of $682.8 million, $688.3 million and $911.3 million in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively."

Aka let's dump this trash fire on the stock market.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#93

Post by bsder »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #48
untog wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that always strikes me about the amount of money swilling around in tech. $90M is an absurdly huge amount of money. By absolutely any outside objective measure of work put in to payoff it is off the scale. To look at this as the founders having lost out is almost comical.

Well apparently you can play baseball and make $330m. Yes, it’s a lot, but to build a $30b company and make 90m pre-tax (maybe 50m post in CA) is something... The obvious comparison is Travis Kalanick, who is definitely a billionaire and retained much more of Uber.

> The obvious comparison is Travis Kalanick, who is definitely a billionaire and retained much more of Uber.

That's because Kalanick got screwed by VC's previously and made sure that wasn't going to happen again.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#94

Post by adventured »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

Some stylized notes: - If they do go public for $20B+ they that would be for more than Twitter and Facebook went public for. Would you really want to own Lyft over FB and TWTR the day they went public? That's a very large ask of the public markets. EDIT To be clear I"m talking about their valuation multiple not the abs valuation. - working with JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Jefferies. So I guess we know 3 banks who won…

> how do you loose $1B in a year on $2.2B in revenues and ave any concrete plan at all to become profitable?

These are not role models (or similar business models), however there are several well-known examples of companies that have survived comparably substantial red ink to revenue ratios:

Twitter was a red ink machine its entire existence until 2018.

Amazon had a net loss of $719m on sales of $1.6 billion in 1999, as they spent aggressively to build out the infrastructure that would facilitate their present advantages. Again in year 2000, they did $2.7b in sales with a $863m operating loss and a $1.4b net loss.

Box looks like it will survive based on its latest quarterly burn rate (in 2015 they had $300m in sales and a $200m operating loss; latest quarter was $163m in sales with a $21m operating loss).

Tesla has burned enormous amounts of red ink to scale its business. Their 2012 figures were $413m in sales with a $396m loss.

Splunk lost $278m on $668m in sales for 2015. Operating income finally turned positive in the latest quarter, after 15 years of losses.

Those companies all survived thanks to sales growth that continued to march forward. A bet against Lyft is a bet on their sales having a low upside from here. They have to get a lot larger to bring that $1b loss down to a reasonable level.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#95

Post by freewilly1040 »

geezerjay wrote: post #72
phamilton wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100M/year is ~8M/month. Some perspective on that, it could by you one of: ~400PB of data in S3. ~2600 bare metal "x1 type" ec2 instances running 24/7, 3 year upfront reservation. ~60M Write IOPS in dynamodb ~300M Read IOPS in dynamodb ~3500 16xl RDS aurora instances Again, each of those is spending the entire budget on a single service, but that seems like a nonsense level of spending. Maybe they really have that muc…

At this point isn't it cost-effective for Lyft to just build its own infrastructure?

With cloud vs DC you also needs to consider that re-sizing datacenter space is a very slow process, and if you're wrong about how much you need it's a massive pain. Buy too much and you're wasting money, buy too little and you're stuck throwing eng time at scrambling to keep your services from falling over, and bottlenecking your entire org with resource constraints.

That's not a judgement on whether it's worth it for Lyft or not, but especially for a growing company with spiky load the decision is not just a dollars to dollars comparison.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#96

Post by docker_up »

darkerside wrote: post #14
jonknee wrote: post #3

2018 revenue of $2.16B, with a loss of $911.3M. Oof. Though as a passenger I can't say I mind buying $2 bills for $1!

2017 Compared to 2018 * As a percentage of revenue, cost of revenue decreased from 62% to 58%. * As a percentage of revenue, sales and marketing expenses decreased from 54% to 37%. These seem to be positive signs.

That's like saying "The cancer ravaging your body is down from 62% to 58%" It's a positive trajectory but don't confuse trajectory with absolute value.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#97

Post by ceejayoz »

pastor_elm wrote: post #42
Fordec wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, a $150M-90M personal net worth at the 18B-30B valuation window. They're not going to starve either.

you could have made that much with a few good crypto choices

Sure, or by picking the right Powerball numbers.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#98

Post by gok »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

Some stylized notes: - If they do go public for $20B+ they that would be for more than Twitter and Facebook went public for. Would you really want to own Lyft over FB and TWTR the day they went public? That's a very large ask of the public markets. EDIT To be clear I"m talking about their valuation multiple not the abs valuation. - working with JPMorgan, Credit Suisse and Jefferies. So I guess we know 3 banks who won…

> If they do go public for $20B+ they that would be for more than Twitter and Facebook went public for.

Huh? Facebook's IPO was at around $100B.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#99

Post by jandrese »

morningmoon wrote: post #46

"We have incurred net losses each year since our inception and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We incurred net losses of $682.8 million, $688.3 million and $911.3 million in 2016, 2017 and 2018, respectively."

It's pretty impressive that they've managed to lose that much money despite the fact that they are just running a website and an app.

Yeah, that's oversimplifying it, but it's not like they own factories or storefronts or need to buy access to expensive services or something. The vast majority of their "employees" are independent contractors with no healthcare or retirement benefits who get paid by the ride (so Lyft doesn't lose out when business is slow).

It seems like it should be a license to print money, but somehow they're losing cash hand over fist. Are they subsidizing rides all over the world?

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#100

Post by [deleted] »

us0r wrote: post #12

>In January 2019, we entered into an addendum to our commercial agreement with AWS, pursuant to which we committed to spend an aggregate of at least $300 million between January 2019 and December 2021 on AWS services. If we fail to meet the minimum purchase commitment during any year, we may be required to pay the difference, which could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations. Not as bad a…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN