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Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#151

Post by svara »

paxys wrote: post #97
munk-a wrote: post #75

Uber emerged into the market as a disruptor in the absolute worst sense of the world - it was challenging an entrenched industry with low efficiency (cab companies make ungodly amounts of money in some markets) but it did so by playing by a different set of rules - skirting both the disingenuous regulations put in to protect cab companies' profit and those in place for the safety of the general public. Even disregard…

> and those in place for the safety of the general public. What regulations are these? Is there any case where taking taxis was or is safer for an average customer than Uber?

In many places around the world, commercial or taxi driver's licenses require additional medical and background checks compared to a regular license, plus taxis require additional insurance.

E.g., UK https://www.gov.uk/taxi-driver-licence/outside-london; Germany https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerschein_zur_Fahrgast...

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#152

Post by watermall »

_bxg1 wrote: post #28

Fully self-driving cars hit a wall (no pun intended), and that was their only story for eventual profitability. Not surprising.

IMO, the idea that fully self-driving cars are anywhere close to being created was always just a combination of hype and wildly irrational underestimation of how hard it is to create them. The challenge of building a road-safe fully self-driving car is not far from the challenge of building artificial general intelligence. I think that road-ready fully self-driving cars are many decades away, and they may never actually be created.

What really surprises me is how many otherwise savvy and tech-knowledgeable people bought into the hype.

That said, I also think that not everyone involved in spreading the hype does it for innocent reasons. For example, people often criticize Elon Musk for making absurd claims about self-driving cars, but then argue that he does it because he is innocently deluded. I suspect it's more likely that he is lying through his teeth.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#154

Post by Barrin92 »

ensmartha wrote: post #146
coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

Not all gig companies are the same. Uber is not a real business. Nothing about hiring a driver or maintaining or running a car is cheaper now than before Uber. Uber will never be profitable unless people are willing to pay the same amount as for regular taxis or for a private driver (i.e. expensive). Airbnb on the other hand is a real and vastly profitable business. Yes there need to be tighter regulations because we…

>Uber is not a real business. Nothing about hiring a driver or maintaining or running a car is cheaper now than before Uber.

It's even worse, outsourcing maintenance, insurance, upkeep and whatnot to individuals is on the aggregate more expensive and time consuming than having a division of labour and a company who can manage these costs in bulk.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#155

Post by cheriot »

kickopotomus wrote: post #134
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more the massive amount of spending they do with little to nothing to show for it. They spent $457m last year on autonomous and flying cars with $0 in revenue from those projects. Maybe that will work out, but I bet every penny was ultimately wasted. Not spending billions a year on R&D certainly makes the financials look nicer. It might not attract as nice of a multiple, but it's not the ride prices that…

R&D is the only way that they survive in the long term. Uber's entire plan is just to keep hemorrhaging money until autonomous vehicles come online. They just did not expect that to be as hard of a problem as it has turned out to be.

I hope they don't actually think that. Autonomous vehicles will turn a two sided market into a one sided market. Just think about all the companies working on self driving cars that don't currently compete with Uber. As soon as they succeed, they'll build an app, buy thousands of cars, and cut the per ride price to nothing.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#156

Post by dsfyu404ed »

chiefgeek wrote: post #143
arrozconcosas wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is the total cost of owning a car in Chicago? Including gas, parking, insurance, maintenance and consumables, depreciation/lease, etc?

A lot. I live just outside the city limit. 2015 VW Golf Wagon. Payment is only $260/month because I bought it used, got a decent amount for my trade in, and put extra down. Insurance $100/month. Gas, tolls, taxes, misc parking $200/month. Parking at my apartment is included in lease but can easily be $200-400 depending on where in the city you are. I'm a freelancer. As such I don't pay for monthly parking in the city…

And how many trips do you take with your car (so we can calculate the cost for replacing it with an Uber)?

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#157

Post by darkwizard42 »

madrox wrote: post #15

I'd be curious what investors of Uber (of which I am not) expected here. I don't think anyone expected a gain, but this article is light on analyst expectations. I would expect several years of this from a company trying to grow the way Uber is.

I think the issue investors had was the growth rate slowing and misses on revenue.

You can see the losses shrunk (lets for just a second ignore the stock based compensation because that should have been something every investor of Uber should have known was coming) but missing on top line revenue is pretty rough.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#158

Post by just_myles »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #66
standardUser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between taxi fares and Uber/Lyft fares has all but vanished. People were willing to pay taxi rates all along, now they are doing so and getting what is arguably a much better service.

> People were willing to pay taxi rates all along Baloney. The market size of people willing to pay taxi rates for transportation is much smaller that the market sizes currently implied by Uber and Lyft's valuation. Before Uber and Lyft, most people I know would only take taxis very occasionally, for special occasions or emergencies. Once Uber and Lyft started offering such good rates they would use ride sharing much…

I rarely took taxis because of the cost. Uber and Lyft value is their price and the ease of getting a ride. However, as we know, this is not a sustainable model (Extremely discount rides.).

Kinda sucks to see as I think the idea of the service is good.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#159

Post by jonknee »

kickopotomus wrote: post #134
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more the massive amount of spending they do with little to nothing to show for it. They spent $457m last year on autonomous and flying cars with $0 in revenue from those projects. Maybe that will work out, but I bet every penny was ultimately wasted. Not spending billions a year on R&D certainly makes the financials look nicer. It might not attract as nice of a multiple, but it's not the ride prices that…

R&D is the only way that they survive in the long term. Uber's entire plan is just to keep hemorrhaging money until autonomous vehicles come online. They just did not expect that to be as hard of a problem as it has turned out to be.

The only way they survive as such a richly valued company perhaps, my point is they could provide the current level of service with vastly lower spending and be a sustainable company. The financial problems aren't they charge too little for rides, it's that they have thousands of people working on bullshit that brings in little to nothing.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#160

Post by kgwgk »

jonknee wrote: post #118
paxys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"R&D" usually includes all engineering expenses on financial reports, which for a company like Uber is the vast majority of operating expenses.

But in this case they clearly don't: Operations and support ($864m), Sales and marketing ($1.2b), General and administrative ($1.6b). They have bloated costs all over. Easy to do when you're the hottest VC backed company around, but the clock is ticking and they'll probably trim a lot of fat.

And last quarter was somewhat unusual due to the SBC charges allocated mostly to R&D. Looking at Q1:

  Cost of revenue $1.68bn
  Operations and support $434mn
  Sales and marketing $1.04bn
  Research and development $409mn
  General and administrative $423mn
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