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Uber opens at $42 per share

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Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#171

Post by smallbigfish »

zackbloom wrote: post #134
mojomark wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unprofitable I hear you, but... Meh, they say invest in companies who make products you use. I use the shit out of Uber and I don't plan on stopping even if the price goes up a bit. Now, I'm upper middle class, and I understand this isn't everyone's mindset, so I have no idea how the rest of the world feels. However, there are locatios, like my crappy hometown where I grew up not so fortunate circumstances, where h…

Who says to invest in companies who's products you use? That does not seem like great advice. You should invest in companies who are undervalued by the market in your opinion, not just because you like the product but because you think they have a good business around it.

First rule is: invest in something you understand.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#172

Post by rtempaccount1 »

throwaway082729 wrote: post #104
rtempaccount1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feeling though is that Amazon had a much larger moat to build, with distribution networks, warehouses, logistics etc. With Uber, what's their moat, so that when they raise prices to become profitable users don't just move away? Lyft/local taxi companies/public transport, all have the infrastructure to provide the service that uber provides.

Lyft has to be in business till then. Local taxi companies are more expensive than Uber and inconvenient. Public transport is barely used. Uber is providing a subsidized public service while employing a lot of people. The moat is there but the question is one of diversification and sustenance as a public company. In the coming days, there'll be a massive internal push to reduce costs, diversify and become profitable.…

Local taxis are perhaps only more expensive due to Uber burning VC cash to compete?

Public transport is barely used in the USA perhaps but that's not the only market Uber needs to compete in to succeed.

And this isn't taking into account Uber's many run-ins with local authorities, which are dragging on , costing money and have the possibility to shut them out of some markets.

From what I understand Uber's main answer to this is "autonomous taxis" but to me that's a long way from being a viable business model.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#173

Post by 908087 »

jorblumesea wrote: post #140
throwaway66666 wrote: post #82

Unprofitable companies are the only ones that really benefit from IPOs. An IPO is basically a way for the company to raise money, but tis time straight from the public. Usually when it gets harder and harder for them to attract private investors. The IPO listing basically guarantees that they won't take the public's billions and run. Successful companies with perfect cash flows (think of Github, Valve, IKEA) always t…

Do you really think FB's problems are because of public investors? Zuck has never cared about user privacy. On the contrary, he has always display a "privacy is dead" mentality.

> On the contrary, he has always display a "privacy is dead" mentality.

Except for when it came to his own privacy, which he spent tens of millions of dollars protecting.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#174

Post by thatoneuser »

criddell wrote: post #93
bfrog wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the burn rate uber has, it'll be bankrupt in < 2 years. There are no other suckers to buy in after the public.

I've never understood why so many people were/are so bullish on Uber. I understand that ride hailing is a big deal, but it doesn't feel like it's that hard to launch a new ride hailing company. I'm basing that opinion on what I've seen in my city. When Uber and Lyft left Austin, there were lots of alternatives that had existed or popped up to fill the space. Aside from brand recognition, what does Uber have that the…

Brand recognition is huge. It's easy on HN to abstract this away as a simple scheme, but your customers are entrusting their lives. Lyft and uber initially had to pay out of pocket hourly wages to get drivers on board. Yes you can pretty much have insurance a car and a simple app and recreate the service but there's much more in it for anyone but big players. And why would they try jumping in at this point?

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#175

Post by idlewords »

carlsborg wrote: post #160
chollida1 wrote: post #3

Some notes from watching Uber open: - if it closes below $45(its IPO price) it will be the first time since 2008 that the happened for a major IPO - TD Ameritrade executed more orders in the first 10 minutes of trading than they did for the first 2.5 hours with Lyft. - Uber is 9% of all trading at TD Ameritrade, retail loves this stock, - market is down today, which isn't helping Uber but its probably not much of a f…

Facebook was at ~$44 on the day it IPOed, and proceeded to fall over the next month to about $19. Today its at $187.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#176

Post by chinesegoldfarm »

tonfa wrote: post #169
chinesegoldfarm wrote: post #161

legit/dumb question. Math does not add for me on the '$82.4B valuation', they are selling 180 millon shares at $45 which is $8.1B what is the remaining 82.4b - 8.1b = 74.3b value come from????? it said: "Uber had raised $28.5 billion as a private company from no less than 166 different backers, with its last valuation in the region of $75 billion. The $82.4 billion valuation that it finally settled on for the IPO (se…

The market cap (valuation) is the value of one share times the number of outstanding shares (those part of the IPO but also all the existing ones). $8B is the amount of capital raised during the IPO.

but when you buy a share, you are part of only the 8B thats being raised with the other 180 million shares, or do you have a small part of the whole 80~b valuation?

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#177

Post by brighter2morrow »

chinesegoldfarm wrote: post #161

legit/dumb question. Math does not add for me on the '$82.4B valuation', they are selling 180 millon shares at $45 which is $8.1B what is the remaining 82.4b - 8.1b = 74.3b value come from????? it said: "Uber had raised $28.5 billion as a private company from no less than 166 different backers, with its last valuation in the region of $75 billion. The $82.4 billion valuation that it finally settled on for the IPO (se…

They're not listing all ownership of the company on the exchange, only a piece of it. There's still other, non-publicly-traded ownership valued at the rest of the 72 billion.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#178

Post by thatoneuser »

24gttghh wrote: post #110
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? This is what I don't understand. Everyone keeps saying the only way they make money is with autonomous cars but they're not even close with being able to do that (probably 5 years, at a minimum, and that's in small select areas). With such a high burn rate, what are they going to do? From everything I read they're not like Amazon where they can just "turn on" monetization unless they're going to hike up their…

>...unless they're going to hike up their prices. I assume that's what any company like this does eventually once they've captured enough of the market.

Anecdotal but I've definitely found alternative transit when the prices were too much. I'm not going to pay $20 more for a ride if I can just take the bus for 20 extra minutes transit time. There's a tradeoff.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#179

Post by fooker »

almost_usual wrote: post #170
carlsborg wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook was at ~$44 on the day it IPOed, and proceeded to fall over the next month to about $19. Today its at $187.

Facebook was also profitable and had about 10x the number of users compared to Uber pre IPO https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/04/22/ub...

Uber has paying users. Facebook had advertisement targets.

Doesn't make too much sense to conflate the two.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#180

Post by hylaride »

chinesegoldfarm wrote: post #161

legit/dumb question. Math does not add for me on the '$82.4B valuation', they are selling 180 millon shares at $45 which is $8.1B what is the remaining 82.4b - 8.1b = 74.3b value come from????? it said: "Uber had raised $28.5 billion as a private company from no less than 166 different backers, with its last valuation in the region of $75 billion. The $82.4 billion valuation that it finally settled on for the IPO (se…

Those 180m shares would represent ~10% of the company. The rest are either locked up and are not allowed to be sold by employees or certain investors for a certain period* or are held by the IPOing company itself to sell off at a later date, depending on demand.

* This is common in IPOs or other events (eg leading up to earnings announcements). The thinking is that if everybody dumped the stock at once, it'd depress the price. It's also common to prevent insider trading. There are a lot of employees who are probably waiting nervously for the blackout period to expire.

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