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Uber opens at $42 per share

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Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#461
post #63
post #11

Did I miss something? I thought Uber was still a long way from being profitable and had no plausible plan for how to become profitable.

Uber is valued more for its potential and growth. Uber is optimizing growth and revenue before it optimizes profit (which could take another decade). See Amazon.

"optimizing growth and revenue" by subsidizing the operations. That isn't "optimization", it's sunk cost that will never be recovered.

Uber is already withdrawing from Asian cities (eg Bangkok) where the price of taxis was close to cost, and in other cities (eg Melbourne), where Uber's flouting of the existing law has lead to deregulation, Uber is just another brand in the market. The price of a normal taxi hailed on the street and an Uber (I took Uber to/taxi from the city the other day, non peak, non surge) was literally within 5%.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#462
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is valued more for its potential and growth. Uber is optimizing growth and revenue before it optimizes profit (which could take another decade). See Amazon.

Uber's business plan under Kalanick was to create a monopoly and then raise rates. Now that Dara is CEO they're trying to legitimize themself, but it's going to be an uphill battle to say the least.

Uber's business plan under Kalanick was to flout the law and use VC money to subsidize until some future time when it would be a monopoly.

It assumed that the market would not react or it assumed that the VCs would keep funneling cash to keep it going.

Uber's business "model" always was unsustainable and the IPO and subsequent drop is entirely realistic as people realize that.

Uber Eats and some airy-fairy driverless vehicle models will not sustain it.

Currently Uber does not fund its vehicles, how does it think that the capital cost of running a driverless taxi fleet in a city will somehow be cheaper than the current cost of driver+car?

Uber doesn't have the capital to actually replace its current business model with one that is capital intensive and it will be eaten alive by existing fleet logistics and car manufacturers. It has no distinct advantage when operating a driverless fleet than Fedex or UPS or the equivalent operators.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are 80 billion dollars worth of shares that exist. However only 8 billion of those shares were released for the public markets. The remaining 72 billion dollars worth of shares are held outside of the public markets (insiders, vcs, the company itself, etc.)

thanks for your time and explanation!

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#464

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.

That's understandable, but for the average non-professional buyer, it's not fair to sell the idea of a '80b company', because it's only that 10% that you guys are saying. thanks for your response!

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, being profitable is considered harmful. More profits = more taxes. Getting virtual “profits” into stock appreciation and structuring revenues to pay nearly zero tax is the name of the game today, and only big corporations can afford it. It is small and medium businesses that pick the bill.

It’s not about taxes. If you don’t have a way to reinvest your cash that means you’re out of ideas and are unable to grow.

Austen, I had a question about this comment from you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16850969

Were these students allowed to look up syntax (e.g. Javascript syntax) rules from a reference manual or were they expected to do the FizzBuzz coding challenge entirely from memory? Because I don't think I can code anything without access to manpages.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#466

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…

is there a website or something to know how many shares does all major companies, appl, googl, amzn offer to the public market? thanks!

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

is there a website or something to know how many shares does all major companies, appl, googl, amzn offer to the public market? thanks!

Any stock research platform will tell you shares outstanding ( https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/key-statistics?p=UBER ), but it’s otherwise as easy as dividing the market cap by the current stock price.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there a website or something to know how many shares does all major companies, appl, googl, amzn offer to the public market? thanks!

Any stock research platform will tell you shares outstanding ( https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/key-statistics?p=UBER ), but it’s otherwise as easy as dividing the market cap by the current stock price.

but again, market cap is the full value of public shares available, how can we now that only 10% of uber's shares are public and 90% privately? or how can we know how many public shares does apple offer and how many are private?

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any stock research platform will tell you shares outstanding ( https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/UBER/key-statistics?p=UBER ), but it’s otherwise as easy as dividing the market cap by the current stock price.

but again, market cap is the full value of public shares available, how can we now that only 10% of uber's shares are public and 90% privately? or how can we know how many public shares does apple offer and how many are private?

No, market cap is all shares, including ones held privately.

Re: Uber opens at $42 per share

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't a valid "business" reason, though.

The investors own the business. Why would they be worried about the business and not just what is in their own best interest.

They are, but what's in their best interest may be growing the company, not in cashing out immediately.
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