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Uber Q3 Results

investor.uber.com

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Re: Uber Q3 Results

#131

Post by uptown »

donkeyd wrote: post #129
mikemotherwell wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are way more positives than that: # No money changes hands, so safer for drivers. # No payment is made in the vehicle, so faster exit times. # Uber records all trips, so easier to work out costs to expense. # Uber uses any credit card, so your boss can pay for your ride without the need for separate expensing. # Driver and passenger are tracked, so there it is easy to find who did what. There are a lot of rape…

I left my umbrella in an Uber in NYC once. I found the driver's number in the app and they were back a few minutes later and I got my umbrella back. This wouldn't have been so easy if it were a regular cab.

And? You got a $5 umbrella back. That has zero relevance to the business model of a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#132

Post by CathedralBorrow »

travisporter wrote: post #122
greggman2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Switched for same reason but now Lyft is being a bit shady. Changed my home address and credit cards won’t work. Gabe then PayPal, insists on “verifying” my home address with another credit card. Why do you need it? I thought PayPal was the middle man so I don’t have to tell you these details I find privileged information. Also had trouble getting support- no way to contact them. unfoetunate because t works great whe…

Is it shady for not accepting your money because of overly stringent security reasons?

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#133

Post by skinnymuch »

femto113 wrote: post #82
rauchp wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is a good chance suburban areas would not have ride sharing for a long time if that happened. All the alternatives popping up would be in cities and dense urban areas for a long time. Or if they get them, they might just be priced worse than the taxis.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#134

Post by rimliu »

cavisne wrote: post #40
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…

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…

Here we have at least four alternatives, if not more. Never used Uber, never going to.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#135

Post by skinnymuch »

dzonga wrote: post #22

if uber, wasn't doing business on an uber scale. then maybe, instead of lighting money, they would be printing money. correct ideas, but wrong execution. but alas, a holoi polloi like me will enjoy the VC subsidized rides

Another user, gok, has a point that if they were just doing ride sharing, they could possibly be break even or profitable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21450647

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#136

Post by skinnymuch »

gok wrote: post #95
scarface74 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a fundamentally "what-if" scenario so it's not going to be perfect math, but we can look for hints. To go from non-GAAP to GAAP, you can add the adjustments up. The biggest non-GAAP adjustment (around 2/3rds of total) is stock-based compensation. That $401 million in stock-based compensation really can't be repeated, and wouldn't have been so large if they had IPO'd sooner. The next big they spent another ~$2…

Really interesting. Yeah wonder how many fewer employees would be needed. Interesting thought exercise overall.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#137

Post by rimliu »

mikemotherwell wrote: post #62
henrikschroder wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber has only made finding the ride more efficient but it has not made the actual ride itself more efficient. Back when Uber was new and everyone in SF was exclaiming how awesome it was and disruptive, one of the major taxi companies in Stockholm launched a new version of their app that basically had a big button going "I want a taxi to my location now", and you pressed it, and you got a "Hey, your taxi will arrive…

There are way more positives than that: # No money changes hands, so safer for drivers. # No payment is made in the vehicle, so faster exit times. # Uber records all trips, so easier to work out costs to expense. # Uber uses any credit card, so your boss can pay for your ride without the need for separate expensing. # Driver and passenger are tracked, so there it is easy to find who did what. There are a lot of rape…

Nothing in this list is unique to Uber or difficult to replicate.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#138

Post by josteink »

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.

> I think the bigger takeaway is that its STILL 500 million dollars lost per quarter which is insane.

And that’s to develop and maintain an app, probably one of the absolutely cheapest things one can do in any industry.

Quite maddening indeed.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#139

Post by V-2 »

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…

> One of Ubers biggest problems is that they have zero brand loyalty.

It may not warrant as much customer loyalty as - say - Apple, but "zero" is simply untrue. To give a most ovious example, in a foreign country/city I'd be strongly inclined to choose Uber over other alternatives because I'm already familiar with it.

For the same reason why I'd eat at McDonald's (rather than some local hot-dog stand): not quality, but safety. I see the risk that I get scammed / food-poisoned as lower.

> Uber has only made finding the ride more efficient but it has not made the actual ride itself more efficient.

It has, to some extent: in the form of shared rides. Traditional taxi companies don't provide such option, for fairly obvious reasons.

> And what if there are robot drivers? Wouldn’t that eliminate at least the human cost? It would. But it would do so for every other transport company as well, and by the same amount.

Not if you've got your own IP behind it - whereas your competitors need to rely on third-party solutions - or even if you can get a better deal on a third-party solution.

> Uber would still be fighting the same competitors in a similar race to the bottom. In summary, nothing can save Uber.

The exact same case could be made for Burger King.

It's quite possible that nothing can save Uber, it's clearly struggling, but I don't think your reasoning correctly sums up actual causes of that.

Re: Uber Q3 Results

#140

Post by donkeyd »

uptown wrote: post #131
donkeyd wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left my umbrella in an Uber in NYC once. I found the driver's number in the app and they were back a few minutes later and I got my umbrella back. This wouldn't have been so easy if it were a regular cab.

And? You got a $5 umbrella back. That has zero relevance to the business model of a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

It's why I pick Uber over a taxi. How is that irrelevant to this discussion?
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