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Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

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Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#61

Post by valuearb »

baddox wrote: post #53
axguscbklp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regul…

There is a huge leap in regulations and public acceptance needed. Either way it doesn’t affect Uber because the tech will be easily licensable.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#62

Post by valuearb »

subsubzero wrote: post #14
gffrd wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I want to know. Ridesharing fares are obviously underpriced … and if they were raised 30% to make them sustainable, it becomes "not worth it" for a good chunk of people who use ridesharing as a supplement to car, bus, transit, etc. I assume the strategy is a long-play to have people + communities become wholly dependent on your services (they skip buying cars, skip learning to drive, transit fails to evo…

I think Uber is a lost cause, sorry to say but the food delivery business cannot be profitable for a majority of customers to where they will still pay for takeout. Their ATS service(self driving cars etc) was using stolen technology from waymo, now they are forced to using their own technologies they are way behind waymo, aurora, nuro, etc. Even ride hailing which is supposed to be their bread and butter is losing m…

Ride hailing wasn’t losing money.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#63

Post by sg47 »

redorb wrote: post #16
criddell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would qualify as a turn around? If three years from now they are a $50 million company that's profitable, would that work?

I don't think so. Being a 50mm company probably includes no longer serving the majority of markets they do now. At 50mm they become a regional taxi service with phone hailing rides. Truth is - now that they are public ~ I'm not sure what success is... for a lot of people who started there a long time ago - the IPO was 'the success' now the public is left holding the bag (mostly by their own choice of buying the stock…

I think they meant $50 million in profit.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#64

Post by mxschumacher »

xiaolingxiao wrote: post #8

Could someone w/ an understanding of accounting add to this report? Uber is "offloading" bike/scooter business to Lime, but also making an investment in Lime... is this just a way to hide losses? Essentially paying Lime to take the red off Uber's balance sheet, while maintaining an option in the micromobility market?

They are swapping equity. Uber exchanges its ownership of jump against shares of lime. It's a common operation and uber has done it many times. It's not directly tied to losses, because the value of the transaction is based on the operational performance of both businesses. It's not shady.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#65

Post by windexh8er »

Jommi wrote: post #58
legolas2412 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'm not sure you're considering how fickle riders are. I work in a (what used to be) high travel group of tech. Most all of my peers and I are heavy rideshare users. Honestly, we don't care who the app owner is, but want the rides to be consistent and reliable. None of my peers is tied to Lyft or Uber, even with promotions and "status" gimmicks. If a ride can show up 3 minutes faster on Lyft - I'm taking that over Uber. To say the consumers are in Uber's pocket is ill informed. If you're taking hundreds or thousands of rides a year and aren't paying for any of those rides - the ride share company has little to no bearing on your choice. It's not like flying an airline where there's significant advantages to reap.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#66

Post by mxschumacher »

warent wrote: post #44

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.

Given that Lyft doesn't have a food delivery business to rely on, this is pretty hard on them.

Lyft doesn't have the huge ownership stakes in ride sharing services other countries that have to be adjusted at inopportune times. Probably best to compare income and cash flow statement for both companies and to take a look at capital structure.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#68

Post by majormajor »

legolas2412 wrote: post #42
opportune wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn't be too worried about Tesla if I was Uber. Even if they get the hardware first without competition it would be a massive undertaking to build out a competitive transport business. The capital costs to create a fleet to have similar hailing times to Uber would be absolutely massive - now you have to buy the car instead of just recruiting a driver - plus they'd have to catch up on the logistics to try to pay for a tens-of-thousands-of-dollars car 5-to-20 bucks at a time.

Waymo is more interesting since things like Google Maps routing and Waze being under the same roof give them a ton of logistics expertise to potentially tap, Alphabet also has a shitton of capital if they wanted to expend it, and they could look at it as a long play where they aren't just getting the cost of the ride back, but they're also collecting all the data. (However, it's not clear to me that this is much more data than Google already HAS just from phone location history.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#69

Post by djannzjkzxn »

paulcole wrote: post #15
martythemaniak wrote: post #9

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…

> First, they were gonna make the jump to be an autonomous robotaxi service Anyone who fell for this is a fool. Nobody could answer the question, “How is self-driving cheaper than exploiting human drivers like they are now?”

The financial benefit seems pretty clear, conditional on self-driving tech working. The capital cost of the hardware would be amortized. Let’s say a driver costs $10/hour. If the self-driving car is active for 16 hours a day it saves you $58k a year in driver wages. Then over more years that number multiplies. It seems totally realistic for self driving tech to cost five figures per vehicle. With mass production the cost of hardware would go down like it always does. I also think it makes a lot of less driver-time-inefficient routes more viable, like driving someone from the city deep into the suburbs with little chance of a return fare. This grows the addressable market.

There are also ethical, legal, and P.R. disadvantages to exploiting human drivers that seem to be getting more significant over time. Personally I’m not super optimistic about the near-term technical viability of self driving cars but it does seem to make Uber’s prospects look better to investors given some possible paths the future might take.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#70

Post by chrischen »

martythemaniak wrote: post #9

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…

Did they actually announce that they were going to do autonomous robo-taxis? I always thought their R&D in self-driving was mostly defensive, and that it was random other people assuming they were going to be autonomous. It just seems their core product has always been their marketplace of drivers. Any investments in autonomous tech would have been behind Google anyways.
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