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Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

economist.com

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Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#241

Post by paulcole »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #201
GCA10 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has a huge community operations team that's in charge of making sure that its drivers stay productive and at least semi-at-peace with the way the system works (and evolves!) There's a lot more human-to-human work needed in this business than for a social-media site, or an automated online-ad service. That's where a lot of the 22,000 employees are, and if Uber could thrive without them, it surely would have alrea…

----Help brand the Uber name and get driver-partners excited to be on the road Why is this essential? It seems like a fluffy marketing position to me.

Classic HN lol.

Just get one of the engineers to write code to get driver-partners excited to be on the road. Seems like an easy weekend hack.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#242

Post by jacques_chester »

Barrin92 wrote: post #222
jethro_tell wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous cars and owning their fleet or leasing from large fleet companies is probably the end goal for increasing the share. I don't see this going any other way. These have always been a play on getting market share at a loss while the tech is being built and converting to a profitable position when there are no contractors to pay.

I don't understand this autonomy angle for several reasons. One is of course that legally (and technically) full autonomy is a long, long time away so we'll still have drivers in cars that want to be paid, but more importantly, Uber doesn't even own autonomous cars. Are they really, in addition to all their other costs, going to stock up on millions of expensive autonomous vehicles? That's unrealistic. And if they do…

There's also the small problem of car manufacturers saying "Oh yeah, that's a great business model. Yoink."

People talk about being "a Ford family". "This is a Chevy household". They cheer on their favourite brand in races.

I don't hear much in the way of "we bleed Uber blood".

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#243

Post by stygiansonic »

warp_factor wrote: post #240
ackbar03 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a short. The banks who sold the trade to soros still need to hedge their exposure by shorting the stock. The short position still gets reflected, if anything it probably amplifies the effect since it's created from a derivative

Why would the bank need to hedge their exposure? Isn't part of their job to create those type of synthetic products based on risk profiles and trade them accordingly? They might have edged their position by issuing an actual short, I'm only saying they don't necessarily have to.

They would need to hedge their exposure because they're generally not looking to make money off of something like this based on the direction. If they're completely unhedged, and LYFT tanks, that would be a huge loss for them.

From what I understand they make their money off of a deal like this by either taking a cut or fees.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#244

Post by nine_k »

OliverJones wrote: post #76

Fundamentals question: Can somebody explain how these ridesharing companies expect to turn a profit, eventually? If you lose 50 cents on every ride, how do you make it up in volume? Every ride is subsidized by the Sand Hill Road crowd. They're a great deal. I took a 40-min ride yesterday for US$12.50 in a high-cost-of-living traffic-clogged city. How can that make sense? A ride in a sketchy 1970s-era New York City gy…

I wonder if they are making profit where they can, and loss where they are trying to get in?

In NYC, a 15-min Lyft ride would cost me $18-20, comparable to the yellow taxi (but more convenient). A 40 min ride, e.g. JFK to midtown Manhattan, would easily be $60 (higher than taxi).

I think that on a market like this, Lyft is pretty viable. It could downsize to major metro areas, and become a luxury service in less prosperous places — and become actually profitable.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#245

Post by icelancer »

chollida1 wrote: post #4

When Lyft was doing their road show there were a few analysts who had price targets of $45 as Lyfts fair value at IPO with an acknowledgement that the amount of shares available would double, and possibly triple when all shares were off restriction, meaning that the $45 price target was a best case and we would probably see far lower once people can sell. This is a company that has maybe 33 million shares outstanding…

>> So whenever someone ask why you don't short an individual stock its always valid to answer that you believe you are right in the long term but the short term could wipe you out if you shorted.

Agreed.

The biggest disconnect here is simply not understanding how the short mechanism works. It is not simply a bet against a stock and call it good. There's a chain of events that have to occur, culminating in someone's previously-held security of said stock.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#246

Post by Barrin92 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #242
Barrin92 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this autonomy angle for several reasons. One is of course that legally (and technically) full autonomy is a long, long time away so we'll still have drivers in cars that want to be paid, but more importantly, Uber doesn't even own autonomous cars. Are they really, in addition to all their other costs, going to stock up on millions of expensive autonomous vehicles? That's unrealistic. And if they do…

There's also the small problem of car manufacturers saying "Oh yeah, that's a great business model. Yoink." People talk about being "a Ford family". "This is a Chevy household". They cheer on their favourite brand in races. I don't hear much in the way of "we bleed Uber blood".

Yes, that's a good point. Car companies could gobble up a tech startup or even social networks could try to leverage their userbase to connect people. A company like Uber really only has a better relationship to the drivers, which is precisely who they're trying to get rid off.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#247

Post by foobiekr »

hellllllllooo wrote: post #205
astrodust wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

22% is really high for what's effectively a dispatch fee. If you factor in the way Uber can dictate price, you may actually be "paying" a higher fee versus what you could've made on your own. If they force you to accept a 40% discount that's got to be factored in, too. Apple takes 30% but they don't tell you what price you can charge.

Would be very interested to see the economics if drivers could set their own pricing.

I don’t think it would work. This works for AirBnB but for Uber you need ride flow in order to keep drivers on the road and riders bothering.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#248

Post by sixo »

airstrike wrote: post #176
justinv wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a good take (sorry for all the Levine links, I just think he provides crisp explanations of financial instruments) on what the underwriter does: The way the greenshoe works is that, in the IPO, the underwriters sold 15 percent more stock than Lyft did. That is, Lyft sold the underwriters 32.5 million shares of stock in the IPO, but the underwriters placed 37.4 million shares with investors. (The underwriters s…

No one should apologize from posting Levine links – that man is a legend and his prose is unquestionably satisfying to read

+1 He's singlehandedly taken me from completely disinterested in finance to fairly interested. I don't think I've ever read nonfiction writing so consistently good

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#249

Post by racecar789 »

chollida1 wrote: post #174
LifeofPi314 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

finviz mentions, the short float to be 7% and Short ratio is 1.05 which says it's much conservative than the numbers posted. How to explain the difference?

Lyft's float can be viewed one of two ways 1) Total Shares of 273Million this is what finviz is using. This includes locked up shares that can't trade right now 2) the Currently tradable float, this is 32 Million and what I, Bloomberg, Markit, and any non budget site will use as these are the only shares that currently matter.

Sorry, trying to reconcile the comments.

LifeOfPi mentioned the short float to = 7%. Chollida1 mentioned the 7% figure was using 273mil shares as a base.

So wouldn't the total shorted shares equal 19mil? (19mil = 273mil X 7%). However, Chollidal mentioned in the first post that 27mil shares are shorted. Trying to figure out how to bridge the gap between 19mil and 27mil...

PS. Not trying to nit-pick. The comments are very useful. Maybe I'm missing something....

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#250

Post by dang »

mimixco wrote: post #146
mimixco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self driving car idea won't help Uber or Lyft for two reasons. First, neither company has the tech experience to build one. Second, and more importantly, both companies would have to buy and maintain the cars which isn't financially viable.

Downvoting this doesn't make it any less true. Sorry, Uber shills on HN. You can be in denial as long as you like and it doesn't change anything.

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