Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber Q3 Results

investor.uber.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 172 posts

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#81

Post by scarface74 »

gok wrote: post #50
scarface74 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you take their made up, non GAAP, financial measurement of “adjusted EBITDA” seriously. This is no better than WeWork’s “community adjusted EBITDA” and we see how that worked out. Adjusted EBITDA. We define Adjusted EBITDA as net income (loss), excluding (i) income (loss) from discontinued operations, net of income taxes, (ii) net income (loss) attributable to non-controlling interests, net of tax, (iii) prov…

Well ok first, there's a world of difference between the reasonably widespread practice of adjusted EBITDA and inventing your definition that does not account for the costs of marketing or leases. But I'm really not even commenting on these results precisely. They would have been in an entirely different position without all the distractions. Uber's ride business now makes a billion dollars a month in revenue. That's…

There is a reason we have a GAAP as a way of not letting companies just make up metrics. Any company can show a “profit” as long as you don’t count expenses that make you unprofitable. They leave out over a dozen expenses to claim some made up definition of “profitability”. From their numbers, how do you get that just the ride hailing business would make more money than it cost to run?

Adjusted EBITDA is just a made up term. It is isn’t GAAP so by definition it isn’t Generally Accepted. Made up metrics are generally used by startups and non profitable public companies to justify their valuations to investors.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#82

Post by femto113 »

rauchp wrote: post #56
kn0where wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way a Lyft merger could be approved in any kind of sane society. It would turn a duopoly into a monopoly.

If both companies are approaching bankruptcy trying to outlast the other, wouldn't the lesser evil be a world with a ride-share monopoly rather than a world without (large scale) ridesharing? With the amount of people that use these rideshare companies as their primary job or to make their daily commute, it seems hard to imagine going back to the pre-Uber/Lyft days. Not that the government or any regulatory body woul…

If both Uber and Lyft go bankrupt we’d have a new rideshare service (or 20) before the ink was dry on the court papers. The public value is embodied in the concept, not in the companies.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#83

Post by malandrew »

kn0where wrote: post #53
rauchp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their bookings are so large that 10 percent change would net them billions more. Kind of a hot take, but this is why I'm long Uber. They're processing an insane amount of orders, and getting a huge amount of people using their app. If Lyft dies, or if a merger occurs, then we have a large ride share company that is still a lot more than 10% better than taxis. Most customers will still be taking Ubers, regardless of…

No way a Lyft merger could be approved in any kind of sane society. It would turn a duopoly into a monopoly.

the market is transportation, not ridesharing. It's not just uber and lyft competing with one another. They also compete with private cars, public transportation, taxis, bicycles, etc.

Together the two of them are just a paltry 1% or so of vehicle miles traveled last I heard. Combined they are still almost two orders of magnitude away from having monopoly power.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#84

Post by cco »

adjkant wrote: post #67
georgeecollins wrote: post #10

You have to go past a lot of non-GAAP accounting to see that they actually lost $1.1B last quarter, almost all from operations. There is a nice chart showing all the things they are taking out to get their adjusted EBITDA of -0.5B. It seems like they are always taking out a bunch of one time charges to claim that there core business would be profitable. But every quarter they have those charges. I don't understand ho…

Stock based compensation is a big chunk of that which arguably doesn't really cost Uber anything really. I think the bigger takeaway is that its STILL 500 million dollars lost per quarter which is insane.

What do you mean it doesn't cost them anything?

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#85

Post by malandrew »

Animats wrote: post #15
treis wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, autonomous cars actually breaks Uber's model. It changes it from taking a % off the top of a market to a capital and maintenance intensive business. Only seems to work if they end up with some sort of franchise model. Sort of like how Coke has a bunch of distributors.

That's about right. Running a fleet of autonomous vehicles is an expensive proposition, and probably will be for years after they start working. Waymo outsources some of that to Avis Rent-A-Car, which already has garages, maintenance facilities, parking lots, car washes, etc. It's quite possible that when automomous vehicle operations start working, the big players will be car rental companies. It's a natural extensi…

I have a hard time believing that anyone on HN legitimately things that companies like Hertz and Avis will be able to become efficient in the ridesharing market before one of the two TNCs become efficient in the fleet management market (which is a subset of the rental car market that overlaps with TNCs once they choose to have their own fleet.

One set of businesses here has modern engineering practices and the other set are dinosaurs. Furthermore, rental companies have more employees dedicated to sales than to fleet management and their entire current customer base is rental car consumers. They literally need to redirect money to R&D long term where that R&D serves no benefit to their current customer base. Wall Street will punish the stock of rental car companies short term for spending R&D on becoming ridesharing businesses that serve a customer they don't yet even have mindshare with. With the TNCs however, wall street won't see any problem with them building out their own fleet. The only condition where wall street looks down on the idea of own fleet management is if they believe a franchise model with third party fleet managers make sense. Either way the TNCs own the relationship with the customer and therefore has all the power.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#86

Post by kgwgk »

cco wrote: post #84
adjkant wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock based compensation is a big chunk of that which arguably doesn't really cost Uber anything really. I think the bigger takeaway is that its STILL 500 million dollars lost per quarter which is insane.

What do you mean it doesn't cost them anything?

They pass the cost directly onto the shareholders :-)

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#87

Post by geolqued »

duud wrote: post #37
ganitarashid wrote: post #17

Having new “one-time” charges every quarter means those are not one-time charges. They’re part of the business, which means the business doesn’t work. One of Ubers biggest problems is that they have zero brand loyalty. For a company that sells a utility (get me, or my food, from A to B) rather than an experience (like a cool vacation in a unique mansion), I will always pick the cheapest option. Whether that’s Uber or…

I disagree that they have zero brand loyalty. Yes it is a price sensitive industry but you're doing something right when your brand becomes a verb. I'm in Melbourne, Australia and I generally pay the extra few dollars for Uber rather than dealing with Didi, Taxify et al's inferior interfaces and slower pick up times. I think Uber take 28% commission vs Didi's 15% and that is reflected in the pricing eg. a $25 Didi fa…

Didi is 5% commission, massive difference to the driver. As an alternative Melbourne opinion, no way am I using Uber.

Last ride I got the driver told me he only considers the premium jobs from uber and prefers Didi.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#88

Post by [deleted] »

greggman2 wrote: post #70
cavisne wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for me uber has huge brand loyalty, it’s sitting in the dock of my iPhone. If I need to go somewhere, or get home, Uber has never let me down. Likewise with food delivery, I certainly have been let down on that but Uber does the best job of letting me track the order and get a refund if needed. Sure Lyft is an alternative, I have it on my phone but simply never use it. It’s incorrect that nothing has changed…

I switched to Lyft a few years ago because of Uber's evil ways. I've had zero problems. If people won't stop using a company that is so blatantly bad we're in trouble.

[deleted]

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#89

Post by mcrae »

glofish wrote: post #44

Basically they lost 10% of their gross bookings. Does this mean that raising the price by 10% has them breaking even? Maybe. It does show the immense potential though, their bookings are so large that 10 percent change would net them billions more. They are booking 1 billion dollars worth of rides every week.

I mean if they increased their prices by 10%, their sales quantity would certainly decrease. So to make that 10% revenue increase would take potentially a significantly greater price increase, substantially changing their value proposition.

Granted most studies show that demand for ridesharing is inelastic at current prices, it says nothing about switching to Lyft etc...

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#90

Post by sah2ed »

mikemotherwell wrote: post #78
ganitarashid wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all great things. And all of them are done by the competitors. In Europe I use MyTaxi, same thing as Uber but much nicer cars

Could not agree more. There are lots of things, easily copied, that make the Uber app great, not just the ride. The question longer terms becomes who continues to get rides, and why? IMHO, ubiquity, especially when traveling, will ultimately be the winning move.

> IMHO, ubiquity, especially when traveling, will ultimately be the winning move.

Many of Uber’s customers are price sensitive. The minority who are not price sensitive are more likely to (be able to afford frequent) travel, but I fail to see how loyalty from this segment will translate into profits over the long term, especially since their international presence in multiple but not homogenous markets is a bet that economies of scale will yield a handsome pay off, where it clearly hasn’t as they had to pull out from direct competition in China for instance.

Post reply on HN