"Net loss attributable to Uber Technologies, Inc. of $2.9 billion, which includes $277 million in stock-based compensation expense and pre-tax impairment write-downs of $2.1 billion. Net loss attributable to Uber Technologies, Inc. excluding the impairment write-downs, net of the tax benefit would have been $1.1 billion." So a loss of $1.1bn is an improvement on $1.4 last quarter, not including write-downs associated…
you shouldn't ignore impairment. it's a place to stuff a bunch of bad decisions, and an amorphous bucket where value can be plausibly inflated and deflated to control the performance story of a company (i.e., where fraud can happen).
Can anyone explain why Lyft is not experiencing the same pain? I've always used them over Uber (not an investor in either, just a customer) and now as much as ever Lyft just seems to be a smarter, more mature company.
I thought Lyft's pain was pretty similar. They had about the same percentage layoffs:
First, they were gonna make the jump to be an autonomous robotaxi service, but that's going nowhere fast. Then they were going to be mobility service - cars, bikes, scooters, everything would go through them. But no more. So what are they going to be now? Just milk their taxi service until Waymo, Tesla or whoever comes and wipes them off the market? Honestly, what are their long-term prospects? I've been staying away…
Here's what I don't get about the robotaxi stuff - did the company and the investors ever actually believe that the robotaxi stuff was even close to viable, or was it just a scam all along? To me it seems obvious that fully self-driving cars are almost certainly, at best, several decades away - and, if it turns out that fully self-driving technology really does require artificial general intelligence, it's quite plau…
There are certainly some overly optimistic timelines being promised by some people and companies, but "several decades" seems extremely pessimistic. There are self-driving cars driving all over San Francisco (and presumably other cities) with minimal human driver intervention. I'm sure they're not perfect, and they might not be as good as whatever human driving ability baseline will be needed for mainstream and regulatory acceptance of self-driving cars, but I don't think there's any huge leap (like the development of AGI) required to get to that acceptance from where we are now.
That's fair. To be clear I don't expect it to be a huge money maker in the short term, just something that's worth doing. Long term the margins look much better once the food delivery market starts to see some consolidation/higher margins due to less promotions and subsidies. Very good point on the supply-side costs for rideshare, hadn't thought of that.
even long-term, it's tempting to think that synergies and market consolidation would lead to higher utilization rates through stacking (making multiple delveries at once), but indications from current players in the space are discouraging in that regard. last-mile logistics is an exceedingly tough nut. i think it's really going to take a wholesale reconfiguration of cities around much more density and mixed-use where…
>i think it's really going to take a wholesale reconfiguration of cities around much more density and mixed-use where shared industrial kitchens and warehouses can make the synergies work out, but of course that's decades in the making.
"Net loss attributable to Uber Technologies, Inc. of $2.9 billion, which includes $277 million in stock-based compensation expense and pre-tax impairment write-downs of $2.1 billion. Net loss attributable to Uber Technologies, Inc. excluding the impairment write-downs, net of the tax benefit would have been $1.1 billion." So a loss of $1.1bn is an improvement on $1.4 last quarter, not including write-downs associated…
you shouldn't ignore impairment. it's a place to stuff a bunch of bad decisions, and an amorphous bucket where value can be plausibly inflated and deflated to control the performance story of a company (i.e., where fraud can happen).
This is all true, but it can also be a place to acknowledge the bad decisions Kalinack made.
When you have a grab bag collection of growth businesses like Uber, the important question is whether the core business can be profitable, and to that end you need to exclude the failures of the non core businesses.
I've invested in uber so here's my take - If uber leaves growth mode and makes smarter investments in new services/markets, they can be profitable. They have positive margin on ridesharing in most markets. I believe uber eats could also earn money in the short term. And I want them to continue investing in last-mile delivery (which I believe they have canceled for now). Even though eats isn't earning a lot now, I bel…
> However I find it much more plausible that Waymo and Tesla will vendor out the details of the rideshare service rather than build their own from scratch. Yeah, but that puts all value add in waymo or Tesla's hands, not Uber's. Uber will have no advantage, and cannot charge juicy margins.
Uber will have the largest network of customers and that’s far from trivial to build. It easily costs $2+ per customer to get your app installed on their phone, and takes years to get hundreds of millions of installs.
I've invested in uber so here's my take - If uber leaves growth mode and makes smarter investments in new services/markets, they can be profitable. They have positive margin on ridesharing in most markets. I believe uber eats could also earn money in the short term. And I want them to continue investing in last-mile delivery (which I believe they have canceled for now). Even though eats isn't earning a lot now, I bel…
> However I find it much more plausible that Waymo and Tesla will vendor out the details of the rideshare service rather than build their own from scratch. Yeah, but that puts all value add in waymo or Tesla's hands, not Uber's. Uber will have no advantage, and cannot charge juicy margins.
The consumers are in Ubers pocket. Wayne and Tesla will be smooching to be Uner's chosen one. Businesses are demand based, not supply based.
I've invested in uber so here's my take - If uber leaves growth mode and makes smarter investments in new services/markets, they can be profitable. They have positive margin on ridesharing in most markets. I believe uber eats could also earn money in the short term. And I want them to continue investing in last-mile delivery (which I believe they have canceled for now). Even though eats isn't earning a lot now, I bel…
> "I believe uber eats could also earn money in the short term." uber eats isn't a revenue play, so investors shouldn't expect any real margin contribution from it. instead, it's meant to protect the flanks--to control supply-side costs for rideshare and provide some risk mitigation through product diversification.
If that’s true it’s a really dumb idea because it doesn’t protect anything. Losing money on side hustles is what got Uber into this mess in the first place.
I feel sorry of what happened to Jump. They had a good product, but Uber bought them and now when they wanted to make their income look pretty while 'protecting their lime investment', they gutted Jump and handed the carcass to lime.