Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#261

Post by user5994461 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #259

user5994461 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cheap pizza from Aldi is £1. A regular pizza with some toppings and maybe meat is £2-3 in most supermarkets. Could be £4 in higher end supermarkets. You see where this is going. Pizzas are worth nothing, supermarkets are making money on these (it's not allowed to sell an item at a loss in Europe). Domino produces for £1-2 and sell for £10-20. The accepted number in the restaurant industry is that food cost must be…

You can't really compare a cheap frozen pizza to a chain pizza. They are bigger, for one. I've read before that a Hot-n-Ready from Little Caeser's is sold for $5.55 but costs $3.50 in just ingredients. They don't make any money on those. The breadsticks that they sell for $3.99, the cup of marinara for $1.99, the $13 veggie pizza and the $15 supreme pizza is where the money is made. Do you think there's an extra $10…

That was the price for fresh, not frozen, and they're not small. Smaller than the large £20 pizza from the chain, sure, but not necessarily smaller than the £10-15 one.

The link is talking about a $11 pizza, that was briefly on sale for $5 (and still making a profit). It's not a $5 pizza.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#262

Post by jacobr1 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 1:39 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #224

erispoe wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is not in the S&P500. And no fund manager is consistently doing better than the market. "Stupid index fund money" looks pretty smart in that regard.

It's false that no fund manager is consistently beating the market; you can easily find actively managed funds that have beaten the market for the last 5 years. The big debate is whether this is due to luck or skill, whether it's possible to tell the difference and whether it's possible to determine which fund manager will be successful in the future. Uber is part of some indexes; S&P500 isn't the only one. The effic…

> The big debate is whether this is due to luck or skill, whether it's possible to tell the difference and whether it's possible to determine which fund manager will be successful in the future.

And the other factor is this: if it is skill, do the high-fees still give you a better risk-adjusted return?

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#263

Post by eloisant » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #202

godzillabrennus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until we have robots to do the labor I agree.

For that to happen, we have to first: - Create robots capable of handling pickup and delivery automatically - a very hard technical problem that were far from solving - Manufacture these robots at scale - Purchase and deploy these robots at scale The timeline for all of these things together is years, even decades into the future. Even if you get the tech down, creating factories that can churn out hundreds of thousa…

drones, maybe

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#264

Post by chadlavi » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

acwan93 wrote: post #34

mardifoufs wrote: post #8

What's Postmates moat? Having never used it, I don't necessarily see the 2.6b$ value in a smaller delivery app that is only really used in some areas of the US. Though I'm sure there is something I'm missing and 2.6b$ is probably less expensive than the cost of pricing Postmates out of the market especially considering it's an all stocks deal. It's just that delivery seems to be easily scalable and easy to just dump…

I use Grubhub most of the time, and I’ve found the thing that keeps me on the platform is 1) The $10 monthly credit on American Express Gold cards and 2) The 2% cash back from the Rakuten portal, which stacks with the 4x points from the Amex card. Of course, a lot of restaurants end up increasing their prices on Grubhub to make up for their fees, and rightly so (I phone in using the number listed on Apple Maps). I st…

> I’m also 95-99% certain once we feel safe dining at a restaurant again we wouldn’t be using these apps anymore.

at least here in NYC, we've been using delivery apps for over a decade. I wouldn't expect usage to drop below pre-COVID numbers once (and really, we should be saying if) things go back to normal.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#265

Post by acwan93 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 1:55 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #122

acwan93 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Grubhub most of the time, and I’ve found the thing that keeps me on the platform is 1) The $10 monthly credit on American Express Gold cards and 2) The 2% cash back from the Rakuten portal, which stacks with the 4x points from the Amex card. Of course, a lot of restaurants end up increasing their prices on Grubhub to make up for their fees, and rightly so (I phone in using the number listed on Apple Maps). I st…

Just an FYI, Apple Maps uses Yelp for at least some of its data and they’ve been caught putting fake numbers on their site for Grubhub commission: https://www.eater.com/2019/8/6/20756799/yelp-grubhub-phone-n... Not sure if this applies to numbers in Apple Maps, but something to bear in mind.

Yeah, it’s tricky with how to find just a phone number for the business. Luckily a lot of businesses have a website (that looks like a simple Squarespace/Wix template) that list a phone number or direct you where to order online.

A lot of restaurants use Chownow, which seems great since there’s no commission paid, but you lose out on being discovered online on Grubhub/Postmates/etc.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#266

Post by acwan93 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #73

acwan93 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Grubhub most of the time, and I’ve found the thing that keeps me on the platform is 1) The $10 monthly credit on American Express Gold cards and 2) The 2% cash back from the Rakuten portal, which stacks with the 4x points from the Amex card. Of course, a lot of restaurants end up increasing their prices on Grubhub to make up for their fees, and rightly so (I phone in using the number listed on Apple Maps). I st…

Exactly,those are amazing perks but they make for very expensive moat. As long as they need to bribe their users to stay with different financial incentives they will keep being glorified VC money redistribution schemes. My guess is that we will see a shift towards profitability when either cash dries out (which would mean Uber wins, they have deeper pockets and cashflow from ride sharing) or restaurants start to shi…

I agree that it makes for an expensive moat. It really doesn’t seem viable to sustain a business like this.

Unless, ghost/cloud kitchens become a thing and these app platforms start building or partnering with these kitchens. Then they have full vertical integration where they can set prices.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#267

Post by acwan93 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

vecinu wrote: post #40

acwan93 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Grubhub most of the time, and I’ve found the thing that keeps me on the platform is 1) The $10 monthly credit on American Express Gold cards and 2) The 2% cash back from the Rakuten portal, which stacks with the 4x points from the Amex card. Of course, a lot of restaurants end up increasing their prices on Grubhub to make up for their fees, and rightly so (I phone in using the number listed on Apple Maps). I st…

> 1) The $10 monthly credit on American Express Gold cards But the annual fee is $250, how is it worth it? At best if you use the $100 airline credit, which is now hard to "hack", and max out $10/mo on Grubhub, you're still paying $30 for the privilege...

Aside from what the peer comments say here, the point multipliers end up offsetting the costs of the annual fee. You’re right that the airline credit is harder to redeem now, but in my case I was luckily able to redeem it all by February.

Also, Chase Sapphire Reserve has the $60/year credit to DoorDash. Seems like we’re just redeeming a bunch of VC money.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#268

Post by vernie » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

nielsole wrote: post #187

wittekm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is doing fine without that garbage human.

Downvoted you. Someone may be despicable, but that is no reason to dehumanize them.

They said "human" what more do you want?

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#269

Post by zippy5 » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #107

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single person isn’t really an efficient use for delivery. When I’m ordering for four people it’s $80+ so paying $20 for delivery is totally fine. And most places I order from are <10min drive.

Maybe it's due to my childhood, but even as someone who could easily afford a $25+ meal, it would hurt me emotionally to pay that much for delivery. Very few restaurants even offer a meal worth $25 in the first place (compared to what I can make at home), even in SF/NYC/London, and on top of that you don't know how long the driver is going to take, what kind of measures they are taking to keep it warm, and/or if they…

I'm guessing you don't know how much your time is worth. Suppose you wanted a nice meal for a friend you spontaneously invited over. You’ll go to the grocery store, cook, clean. Not only have you spent say two or more hours for a meal. If you paid yourself minimum wage, you wouldn't break even no matter how cheap the ingredients.

Frugality is a useful mentality, but it’s important to account for the economic value of time, energy, focus, and happiness. If you try billing yourself for your chores at your normal wage, your behavior will change.

Re: Uber, Postmates Agree on $2.65B All-Stock Deal

#270

Post by moneywoes » Mon, Jul 06, 2020, 2:22 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #225

MangoCoffee wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is not on S&P. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies

Well, they're in the Russell 1000 and others, not to mention a bunch of ETFs that are basically indexes of their own. If you want a properly diversified global index fund portfolio, you wouldn't want to limit yourself to 500 of the largest American companies. Mine contains 4 funds covering ~2500 global companies.

What funds and what is your allocation