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Uber S-1

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Re: Uber S-1

#351

Post by anitil »

panarky wrote: post #324
yashap wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s say Waymo get to legit, truly market ready SDC taxi tech 3 years before Uber, and they start expanding into Uber’s markets at lower prices. This is bad for Uber, but hardly the end of their business. People won’t immediately trust SDCs, so Uber will lose market share only gradually even if their prices are higher. Plus Waymo have to scale up massively to significantly compete with Uber - that’ll take time. If W…

The conventional wisdom is that self-driving cars will be much cheaper than rideshare, and the only question is when they'll reach level-5 autonomy. But what if they're not actually significantly cheaper? Let's say an Uber driver who works 60 hours gets paid $1,200 gross, or $20 per hour. Could the self-driving car drive the same trips with $1,200 lower cost? Not a chance. Because the $1,200 paid to the Uber driver i…

I can see this being a case where the second mover has the advantage. Ie let Waymo struggle to find profitability, then hire away their talent and have at it.

Re: Uber S-1

#352

Post by gandutraveler »

gonehome wrote: post #345
mandeepj wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-technical users what did you mean?

I didn’t write that, but I’d guess easy to use like FB (grandma can use it). Not setting up your own locally hosted diaspora node.

It's amazing how FB has gotten so easy to use now. As one of the early users I remember FB was more cooler I'm those days because majority found it too difficult to use.

FWIW I deleted fb 3 years ago.

Re: Uber S-1

#353

Post by nostrademons »

aliston wrote: post #349
rocqua wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Employees get taxed on the value that they vest at IPO, but are locked up from selling for 6 months. The company withholds a percentage, effectively selling a portion at IPO, but it is less than the effective tax rate. I should clarify that this applies to RSUs, not options. Edit: something similar can happen with options as mentioned, but the mechanics are slightly different.

For RSUs the withholding should be in shares - if your effective tax rate is 40% and you vest 5 shares a month, they grant you 3 shares and immediately sell 2 to cover the taxes. If your effective tax rate was 30%, they'd round up, still sell 2 of them, but remit the cash in excess of taxes to your paycheck. At least that was how my Google shares worked. A higher IPO price works to your advantage, because the refund you get for fractional shares is worth more. You're also never in the position where you have to cover the (income) taxes for RSUs with cash from the stock sale, because the taxes have already been withheld in stock. You only have to pay capital gains when you sell.

Re: Uber S-1

#354

Post by [deleted] »

panarky wrote: post #35
partingshots wrote: post #18

So... 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 -…

> can't imagine how Uber is worth anything If the operation doesn't make an economic profit, and if there isn't sufficient moat to defend the operation until it can become profitable, then I agree with you it's not worth anything. But in fact, Uber does have a massive moat -- its network of drivers and riders in thousands of cities around the world. No competitor is even close. It takes tremendous capital expenditure…

[deleted]

Re: Uber S-1

#355

Post by ManishR »

People here seem to think that Uber/Lyft do not have any competitive moat. I disagree. What we seem to forget is that just because a VC can burn boatloads of money to capture ridesharing market from Uber/Lyft doesn't mean that they would. From a game theoretic POV, Uber and Lyft have signaled that they're ready to fight for survival in markets they are established in. Unless as a startup founder you can demonstrate that you can achieve lower cost structures than Uber/Lyft, no VC will fund their rapid growth (small offerings will still find a niche, assuming they don't get gobbled up). Uber/Lyft do have a VCs-will-not-race-to-the-bottom-with-them moat, and tomorrow they might as well raise their prices to turn profitable. Their biggest challenge is Waymo and SDC because if a competitor as significantly lower cost structure, all bets are off.

Re: Uber S-1

#356

Post by bronz »

people in here keep on saying that uber is not making profit. where is the source for that? i remember people saying the same thing about tesla. complete dogma. nobody seemed to understand that tesla was investing huge amounts of money into the development of other cars and expanding their factories. so what are ubers expenses? it does not pass the smell test. what is the expense that is killing them?

and people in here also dont seem to appreciate that uber can change their prices. they cant right now, but they will be able to soon. all the investor money floating around means that their competition may be able to operate in the red for extended periods of time. when the investor money dries up and everyone is surviving on profit, prices can go up. and they will go up because rideshare is the most efficient and cheapest way to do taxis -- nobody is going to come in and disrupt uber. except for driverless cars. but driverless cars arent going to happen. not anytime soon.

edit: i just looked at the chart in the document and as far as i can tell they are 3B in the red. not really sure what the units are in that chart. ok, well there are a lot of expenses where i cant tell exactly what they are, but their marketing expenses were 3B. 3 fucking billion dollars -- am i reading that correctl? thats the same amount by which they are in the red. i also see some very high numbers for management. all uber has to do is cut the fat and they will be making a nice profit.

Re: Uber S-1

#357

Post by tompetry »

partingshots wrote: post #18

So... 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 -…

Uber facilitated 10 billion rides in 2018. I think you are severely underestimating the ease at which another service, benefitting from self-driving capabilities or not, will erode such a massive network. Value of company will be correlated with value of the network, so I can certainly see how it is indeed worth something... and actually quite a lot.

Re: Uber S-1

#358

Post by aphextron »

jjeaff wrote: post #92
aphextron wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous cars won’t be proprietary to each manufacturer or company. Once someone has perfected their system, everyone else will drop what they are doing and simply buy it like an OS. It’s all in the software; hardware required (cameras, radar, GPUs) is already cheap and ubiquitous. My money is on Tesla or comma.ai for this.

Why Tesla? They seem to be near the bottom of the pack when it comes to self driving capability.

>They seem to be near the bottom of the pack when it comes to self driving capability.

And yet they are the only company in the world to have shipped a workable level 2 system in mass quantities. Orders of magnitude greater than Cruise or Waymo's fleet size. That puts them miles ahead in terms of data collection, which is the real challenge.

Re: Uber S-1

#359

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

mckenna wrote: post #331
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the voting structure of shares, many funds will pass over a company. SNAP, for example, is only in 20-some ETFs: https://www.etfchannel.com/finder/?a=etfsholding&symbol=SNAP Most people investing in Mutual Funds and ETFs aren't getting exposure to SNAP. That may be the case with LYFT and Uber as well.

Thanks for that link. FB has a dual-class structure, but its owned by all major ETFs: https://www.etfchannel.com/etfs/?symbol=FB If UBER gets into indices, that would be scamming hard earned 401k dollars of unsuspecting ordinary folks. Sigh... More hate for Silicon Valley when folks figure out

Mutual fund and ETF investors have historically done quite well with FB.

Re: Uber S-1

#360

Post by bagacrap »

moflome wrote: post #61
kapurs151 wrote: post #43

While I admit that the losses are staggering, the growth rates are also astounding: Revenue 2016: $3.8bn 2017: $7.9bn 2018: $11.27bn Trips 2016: 1.8bn 2017: 3.7bn 2018: 5.2bn The internet is such a game-changer.

> The internet is such a game-changer. Yes but also portable, low-cost GPS enabled internet connected devices are a game-changer. I don't see how Uber or Lyft could exist prior to the iPhone pushing adoption of GPS.

Did the iPhone so the most to push adoption? iPhone 1 didn't have GPS but the first Android device did. The killer app on mobile phones has always been Maps. I'd give Google the most credit here.
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