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Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

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Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#21
post #11

I am long on Uber: taxis are dead, it will not go anywhere. The only problem is that the board made a strategic mistake that felt good short term. They tried to retain users by pushing the founder out, and hiring a diversity CEO. This failed long term as any populist board move does. But they still have a chance to have their NeXT moment and bring Travis back.

You are long on the new transportation model for taxi like rides but is Uber the right horse to bet on? I personally think not.

At the current share price, no, it's probably not. It's the weak version of WeWork. The company is wildly overvalued based on growth expectations it can't possibly meet after a history of investor-driven mania. But the business model is solid. Pervasive gig-sourced drivers across the world with a universal interface is absolutely what the market wants.

Uber the company may be in trouble, but Uber the brand will be driving people around for decades to come.

I still wouldn't buy them right now, though.

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#22
post #10

People are dumping Uber with over 79 million shares traded already. Compare that with an average of 10 million traded daily leading up to this. Also weigh this against the fact that Uber had a relatively small float from its IPO compared to the shares coming free now. They had about 200 million shares available on their IPO and 4x that coming off restriction which is a huge ration. They tried their best to boost thei…

What's their cash on hand position, I believe I saw that there's 13B, after adding 8B in the IPO, that seems like a ton of cash on hand for a business that isn't showing any signs of turning of profit. Could they not just without any further cash infusion continue to lose similar amounts for the next three years and be cash solvent. Does that then not give a big incentive to figure out how to become profitable in the…

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Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#23
post #10

People are dumping Uber with over 79 million shares traded already. Compare that with an average of 10 million traded daily leading up to this. Also weigh this against the fact that Uber had a relatively small float from its IPO compared to the shares coming free now. They had about 200 million shares available on their IPO and 4x that coming off restriction which is a huge ration. They tried their best to boost thei…

What's their cash on hand position, I believe I saw that there's 13B, after adding 8B in the IPO, that seems like a ton of cash on hand for a business that isn't showing any signs of turning of profit. Could they not just without any further cash infusion continue to lose similar amounts for the next three years and be cash solvent. Does that then not give a big incentive to figure out how to become profitable in the…

The core business is very profitable. Loss-making is happening in their less mature product categories and expansion efforts.

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#24

So I think people may be misinterpreting this drop: lock up expired today, so the sales today -- throughout the day -- are a result of the lock up expiry. This pre-market drop is the result of people anticipating the drop and selling before the market opens. It is also, partly, driven by the disappointing earnings from 3 days ago, and indeed the drops over the last few days have been about as large. For what its wort…

I'm surprised it isn't much lower. Maybe people holding the stock are too "pot-committed" to sell at this point?

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#25
post #7

With the layoffs, the quarterly earnings, and now this, it sounds like Uber’s having a bit of a tough time. Sentiment about the viability of Uber long term is quite negative. Can anybody at Uber talk about what the morale and culture is like right now? I’ve received a job offer and I’m struggling to reconcile what I’m observing externally with what I’m hearing from the small set of people I’ve spoken to.

Doesn't appear HN is particularly negative about Uber: https://hnprofile.com/compare?search=uber,lyft

It marked Uber having a significant loss and slow growth as positive — seems like a bad signal based on an initial sanity check

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#27
post #16

From Q3 results, it sounded like the company was profitable just on ride-sharing itself and was losing a ton of money on eats + cargo + autonomous vehicles R&D. I wonder what a fair valuation would be for just the ride-sharing business if they were to spin off / shut down every other part of their business and essentially become Lyft.

I wonder how much cost offloading was done to make ridesharing look profitable and everything look like a loss. Uber needs a positive narrative of some kind

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#28
What surprises me is that so many tech companies issue huge amounts of RSUs and their stock price hasn't tanked. Do people actually keep their RSUs in their employer? I sell asap, I'm not going to be Enron'd. One day this whole house of cards will collapse.

Would be great if anyone had some figures on how many employees sell vs keep their RSUs.

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#29
How much wealth was redistributed upwards? Who benefited from Uber other than the founders and maybe 1% of the entire business?

I find it highly unethical for such a business to be able to ignore so many laws most of which protect the have nots to build a system that moves most of the profits to the haves. Then dump the broken business to IPO for fools to buy up and loose as well.

Re: Uber Sinks to New Record Low as IPO Share Lockup Expires

#30

I am long on Uber: taxis are dead, it will not go anywhere. The only problem is that the board made a strategic mistake that felt good short term. They tried to retain users by pushing the founder out, and hiring a diversity CEO. This failed long term as any populist board move does. But they still have a chance to have their NeXT moment and bring Travis back.

I'll ignore whether or not it's morally sound to bring him back, since in the US putting reprehensible men in positions of leadership is par for the course these days. What moves would Travis make to attain profitability?

Remember that Steve Jobs helped Apple by killing a lot of products and simplifying their offerings. In the latest numbers release, rides were "profitable"; Uber Eats wasn't. I would agree that if Uber focused on the core product, and eliminated all the side projects, in the long run it would work best.

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