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

Uber S-1

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 559 posts

Re: Uber S-1

#541

Post by arcticbull »

smallgovt wrote: post #333
arcticbull wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you think 20% of costs are fixed and 80% are variable, or that the elasticity figures are what you suggest they are. Realistically, Uber has a higher cost basis than a taxi because taxis cut down on insurance and fleet expenses through pooling. As such, Uber is not really able to beat them on price. There's no evidence to support the idea that people are willing to pay more than taxis to use Uber or…

> I'm not sure why you think 20% of costs are fixed and 80% are variable This was based off the "Core Platform Financial and Operating Model" chart in their S-1, which states 75% of gross revenue is attributable to driver compensation. So, I imagine 80% is the low end. > I'm not sure why you think the elasticity figures are what you suggest they are I'm not sure on the elasticity figures. It's a guess based on runnin…

The thing about Driver compensation is that it’s not just their take-home pay, it’s what they have to pay to maintain their vehicle and gas. They’re already barely making minimum-wage when you factor in these costs, at some point you can’t get more blood out of the stone. Point taken re pool though it isn’t something everyone will do.

Re: Uber S-1

#542

Post by oarabbus_ »

panarky wrote: post #280
oarabbus_ wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Ola in India, Didi in China... both are expanding internationally. If Lyft somehow manages to offer riders consistently cheaper fares (say, 50% off the Uber fare for 1 month) people will switch in droves.

> 50% off the Uber fare for 1 month That's exactly what it would take. A tremendous capital expenditure, sustained over time, to dismantle Uber's network of drivers and riders.

Lyft can survive 1 month of that no problem...

25% off would probably do the trick.

Re: Uber S-1

#543

Post by rossdavidh »

kevstev wrote: post #538
datdata wrote: post #494

Wow those are some heavy risk disclosures: We have incurred significant losses since inception, including in the United States and other major markets. We expect our operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future, and we may not achieve profitability. Our business would be adversely affected if Drivers were classified as employees instead of independent contractors. If we are unable to attract…

eh, those are more CYA than anything. Yes, these are risks, but thats in plain sight. Its about disclosing all the ways you could fail, however obvious, to avoid a lawsuit. There are lots of scary statements like that in most financials.

Yes, but...they are all not even all that unlikely, in this case. This looks to me like "IPO now because this is as good as it will ever get".

Re: Uber S-1

#544

Post by AsyncAwait »

arsenico wrote: post #520
icebraining wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which Western Europeans countries have you tried?

Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, UK (hah), France, some cities in Italy, some places in Spain.

I live in the UK. Can't say I agree with you. Especially because I have a mobility impairment. The Uber drivers are always more willing to help, (I'd imagine thanks to the rating system), stop exactly where needed etc.

Re: Uber S-1

#545

Post by acchow »

dmoy wrote: post #376
nostrademons wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Except most companies (including Google) withhold supplementary income at 22% federal plus FICA, regardless of whether your marginal bracket is 22% or 35%+. Usually this results in significant underwithholding on RSU for federal tax.

Can you ask your employer to increase their RSU withholdings?

Re: Uber S-1

#546

Post by djakjxnanjak »

icebraining wrote: post #517
djakjxnanjak wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Uber and Lyft are both subsidizing your rides - but for a new service to get off the ground would require even more subsidies. There’s a cost to idling and waiting for someone to come along and pay you for a ride. The higher the density of riders and drivers, the lower this cost and the less subsidy required for a given price level.

You only need to idle if you're using a single app. Many drivers use multiple apps at the same time.

True, but I believe this is approach only works well in certain cases. For shared/pooled rides, drivers are automatically assigned a chain of rides. In these circumstances probably few drivers would bother to keep another app open that hardly ever gives them any rides. It would take major subsidies to overcome that. You would need a lot of capital, and I don’t know who’s going to provide that other than investors.

Re: Uber S-1

#547

Post by [deleted] »

dougmwne wrote: post #112

I wonder if anyone reading through this filing could speculate: Can Uber just raise their prices to reach profitability? If they lost $3B on $44.1B of Gross Bookings, it seems they could raise their prices by about 7% to hit breakeven. Would they really lose that much market share if they did that?

[deleted]

Re: Uber S-1

#548

Post by lsc »

ak2347 wrote: post #526
djakjxnanjak wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Uber and Lyft are both subsidizing your rides - but for a new service to get off the ground would require even more subsidies. There’s a cost to idling and waiting for someone to come along and pay you for a ride. The higher the density of riders and drivers, the lower this cost and the less subsidy required for a given price level.

The network effects are key here because you can't have competitive ETAs without having a lot of supply density and without enough demand you can't build the supply density, so aside from the incentives you are seeing Lyft and Uber using now, there are even more subsidies to build the marketplace and you have to do that city by city and neighborhood by neighborhood in the case of larger markets like NYC. There are al…

sure, city by city and neighborhood by neighborhood... but my point is that you have a viable business, even if you only cover one city or even one neighborhood. Most of my traffic is to work and back.

Assuming that you have cheap/open source software (a big assumption) you could even setup federation. Like you and your crew setup a co-op in one area, and get a lot of riders through personal contacts. I and my friends setup a similar drivers co-op in a nearby area, and similarly use our contacts to build up a very local critical mass.

With federation, you could set it up so that if one of my drivers went to your area, say to drop off a customer, they could optionally be put on your network, either to work there, or maybe just to get customers on your network who wanted to go to my area.

I mean, you still have the huge problems of bad behavior, but I don't think uber/lyft have really addressed those problems very well, either. I think those problems are really hard, and maybe those problems would be easier to solve with a bunch of smaller but federated companies than with two large companies? Maybe not. I don't know.

I'm just saying, I think a lot of the critical mass issues could be pushed off to local leaders.

Re: Uber S-1

#549

Post by arsenico »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #544
arsenico wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, UK (hah), France, some cities in Italy, some places in Spain.

I live in the UK. Can't say I agree with you. Especially because I have a mobility impairment. The Uber drivers are always more willing to help, (I'd imagine thanks to the rating system), stop exactly where needed etc.

In London - I'd say cabs are better. In Liverpool and Manchester, I'd say on par with Uber. Didn't have experience with Assist and Access Uber cars, so you have a better view on that.

Re: Uber S-1

#550

Post by arsenico »

icebraining wrote: post #537
arsenico wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, UK (hah), France, some cities in Italy, some places in Spain.

Thanks. I'm surprised your description applies to all those places, but to be fair I don't really have direct experience riding taxis there.

Why surprised?
Post reply on HN