How do you short stocks? Asking for a friend.
You can buy puts on robinhood fairly easily.
Uber opens at $42 per share
311–320 of 470 posts
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#312There's way too many comments in this thread comparing Uber's non-profitability to Amazon's which I think is quite silly. Amazon lost $2.8 billion over its first 17 quarters while Uber lost $4.5 billion in 2017 alone. Also comparing Uber to Facebook is quite silly too. Facebook had a lot more users than Uber but they are also different types of users. One is a free user with hope for targeted advertisement (in which…
> Also comparing Uber to Facebook is quite silly too. Facebook had a lot more users than Uber but they are also different types of users.
The main difference seems to me that Facebook enjoys a network effect: you can move to a different social network, but who will you find there? While you can download as many taxi service apps as you want and use one or the other, the one that has the cheapest offer. If an Uber competitor comes up with autonomous driving first and offers ride for half of Uber's price, people will switch instantly.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#313Earlier 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.
Right but they haven't yet. Lyft is big in the US and most cities / towns in the US and across the globe have small start-ups doing similar ride sharing.
Does Uber have enough market to hike their prices yet? Will it before it runs out of money? If they're IPOing I feel like they have to think they can do this, I just don't get the how.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's an interesting definition of "made"... assumes the concept of liquidity has no meaning. Thats interesting definition of "literally traded a bunch of shares to underwriters in exchange for $8,100,000,000 and let the underwriters worry about liquidity on the stock exchanges" Uber has dollars for the shares they sold. Liquidity is not a concern for the party of the transaction I talked about.
...aaaand, Uber (meaning, the owners of Uber pre-IPO) has less ownership in the business afterwards. Sure, you can argue that the $8.1B is something "real" that the owners of Uber have more of, afterwards. But you also have to acknowledge that the business of running Uber is also something "real" that the owners of Uber have less of, afterwards, having traded it in a heavily-scrutinized auction.
> ...aaaand, Uber (meaning, the owners of Uber pre-IPO) has less ownership in the business afterwards.
How is that even a point? They had 23 funding rounds according to Crunchbase where the same thing happened everytime, with today being the 24th.
You don't have to acknowledge any of those things, this is how finance works.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the sensible conclusion here is that the two companies have such different business models and goals that it doesn't make much sense to compare them at all.
Precisely my point. Advertising is a high margin industry with poorly understood issues. Logistics is a low margin winner-takes-all industry which is fairly well understood.
this was the smartest thing put in simplest terms on this thread.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
The base salaries are comparable but the share comp, which is generally close to half of comp, was based on valuations that didn't pan out. Now that it's been marked to market it doesn't look great. Keep in mind that other tech companies have doubled their share price or better in the last four years.
Uh, okay, but what you actually said was people were "underpaid compared to industry salaries." When you accept equity, you accept risk. I don't think that there's a terribly bright future for Uber, but the stock hasn't been a catastrophe so far, and all the other big stocks will have disappointing times too.
In the context of the individual it is useless to speak of average outcomes. Over the lifetime of Uber all other tech stocks have had a huge run. If you had a choice to work at Nvidia and you worked at Uber instead you left $5 million on the table.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#317Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you’re joining a $60 billion company with thousands of employees expecting rocket-ship growth, that’s kind of on you, I think. You wouldn’t expect that from a public company; why would you from a similarly sized company that just happens to be pre-IPO?
Amazon in 2016 was $502 a share, it is $1900 now Microsoft in 2016 was $51, $127 now Facebook was $97, $189 now We're not even talking about rocket-ship growth here. We are talking about option strike prices losing money in one of the most favorable economic time periods where massive, healthy public business did have monstrous growth. I would have at least expected price parity with other large companies - even that…
I think the story with Amazon and Facebook are from being over.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#319There's way too many comments in this thread comparing Uber's non-profitability to Amazon's which I think is quite silly. Amazon lost $2.8 billion over its first 17 quarters while Uber lost $4.5 billion in 2017 alone. Also comparing Uber to Facebook is quite silly too. Facebook had a lot more users than Uber but they are also different types of users. One is a free user with hope for targeted advertisement (in which…
> Also comparing Uber to Facebook is quite silly too. Facebook had a lot more users than Uber but they are also different types of users. The main difference seems to me that Facebook enjoys a network effect: you can move to a different social network, but who will you find there? While you can download as many taxi service apps as you want and use one or the other, the one that has the cheapest offer. If an Uber com…
That's a very good point too which I missed. People don't care about whether their friends are using Uber or some other app. They care about whether the ride is cheaper. It's a bottom of the barrel pricing game in ride sharing apps.
Re: Uber opens at $42 per share
#320Earlier 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 taxi companies are more expensive than Uber and inconvenient
Uber essentially sets money on fire in order to make the rides cheaper than alternatives, but that will eventually end. I've got some bad news for you about what happens to prices when that occurs.
Of course that is the ultimate goal of Uber, and all ride sharing systems: to destroy any and all local public transit and competitors, no matter the cost, by setting obscene amounts of money on fire and then, when it's all said and done, they get to be the only name in town and price however high they want.
(Side note, but it's going to be legitimately hilarious when Uber re-introduces the concept of "buses" and tech nerds here drop their jaws in disbelief at how amazing it is.)
> Public transport is barely used.
I've got some bad news about places outside of the US (and even many places inside the US).
> Uber is providing a subsidized public service while employing a lot of people.
No they don't; they actually do not do either of those things. Uber isn't a "public service", by definition, that is, unless words simply don't mean anything anymore. It's a business designed to make money; the fact that you confuse these two proves Uber's marketing is working on you, not that it's actually true in any meaningful way.
They also don't actually "employ" any of their drivers, the largest part of their "work force", and they have argued that position in court as well in order to avoid paying benefits, etc for their drivers. And of course, their inevitable goal is to just move to autonomous cars as far as possible, meaning those "employees" (who aren't actually legally defined as such) will eventually get kicked out of the whole system, if they can get there. Of course, once that happens, the tune will go from "uber employs a lot of people, and therefore they're good" to "why did you ever expect uber would keep employing you? just get another job" over night, without a hint of self-reflection at all.