Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that's market collusion, and that is illegal.
Collusion is when the parties coordinate on the price increases. If they both increase prices independently to achieve profitability, then I don't believe that to be illegal.
Uber S-1
341–350 of 559 posts
Re: Uber S-1
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
What moat? All the driver needs to do is load another app on their phone.
What moat? All the user has to do is change the search engine to Bing from Google.
Re: Uber S-1
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh? How much does a full time driver earn? Let's say $30000 for the sake of argument. A car that is run as a taxi or rideshare service full time will last maybe three years. So that eould mean $90000 for the driver plus around $40000 for a decent car. A mass produced self driving taxi car that costs more than $130000 seems very unlikely.
If you want to make up unrealistic numbers, sure, then unrealistically a self-driving car is cheaper. But with a self-driving car, operational costs like registration, maintenance, fuel/charging, and insurance, would all have to come out of Waymo's pockets instead of the driver's $30,000k. If the car is being driven 24/7, then maintenance costs will be much higher because of the increased wear and tear, and insurance…
Re: Uber S-1
#344Re: Uber S-1
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quick note that Facebook, unfortunately, has no real competitor for the sheer number of things it does. As soon as one comes out built for non-technical users the way Facebook is - and hopefully is a nonprofit - I’ll go running to it and encourage my friends, too.
> non-technical users what did you mean?
Not setting up your own locally hosted diaspora node.
Re: Uber S-1
#346So... Let me see if I have this straight: 1. Uber is unprofitable and the only way it can become profitable is to get SDC's 2. Uber is significantly (years) behind Waymo in the SDC space. 3. Waymo will launch SDC taxi services first meaning: - When it puts in an order for SDC components no one else is going to be buying in bulk and thus it can have effectively 100% of capacity of these specialized equipment makers -…
Re: Uber S-1
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
1.5 billion on R&D, 3 billion on marketing. Uber don't get the income from the rides without the marketing so I don't get why you get to ignore that when working out if they are profitable or not.
Does marketing and R&D cost grow linearly with number of rides though?
Re: Uber S-1
#348As an IPO n00b, I have basic question: Let's say I'm a startup founder with revenues in $10M and want to raise money. Can't I just go straight to IPO instead of making VC rounds? It seems you don't need to be profitable or even have to have great outlook. Meanwhile majority of IPOs are getting magically funded anyway no matter what. On the top of it you get to even keep most of the voting shares. So what are the mini…
I don't know the answers to your specific questions, but note that such late and humongous IPOs are a recent phenomena: https://steveblank.com/2019/04/10/startup-stock-options-why-... My guess is that $10M/yr in revenue is close to enough to IPO. It's just not popular recently.
1. Due to recent regulations (introduced after the 2000 dot-com crash), the fixed cost of going IPO (SOX compliance, putting internal controls in place, audits etc) have significantly gone up.
2. The additional scrutiny and public visibility that comes from going public is a drag on management bandwidth, employee morale and attention.
3. Private money is now plentiful and cheap, so it might actually be cheaper just to take private investors than public.
4. Public markets prefer stable, predictable companies with a known well understood strategy. Consider how often Tesla is in the public eye and how they might have benefited from staying private longer given their unpredictable business and strategy.
Re: Uber S-1
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are going to get hammered on taxes, though. The IPO price sets the income they are taxed on while the price in 6 months determines what they actually take home. The result is that if you’re in California and the stock price falls to 30ish, you effectively take home nothing.
Why is stocked taxed at the IPO value rather than the current value? Relatedly, what happens if you simply sell the stock? Seems to me like that would just generate income you owe taxes on.
Edit: something similar can happen with options as mentioned, but the mechanics are slightly different.
Re: Uber S-1
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are going to get hammered on taxes, though. The IPO price sets the income they are taxed on while the price in 6 months determines what they actually take home. The result is that if you’re in California and the stock price falls to 30ish, you effectively take home nothing.
Why is stocked taxed at the IPO value rather than the current value? Relatedly, what happens if you simply sell the stock? Seems to me like that would just generate income you owe taxes on.
This situation doesn't apply when you have straight RSUs that you sell when the lockup ends. These are withheld at income tax rates when vesting, and then taxed as capital gains rate when you sell. The IPO price doesn't matter in this case.