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Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

economist.com

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Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#51

Post by brentm »

LifeofPi314 wrote: post #34
chollida1 wrote: post #4

When Lyft was doing their road show there were a few analysts who had price targets of $45 as Lyfts fair value at IPO with an acknowledgement that the amount of shares available would double, and possibly triple when all shares were off restriction, meaning that the $45 price target was a best case and we would probably see far lower once people can sell. This is a company that has maybe 33 million shares outstanding…

Could you please tell me how do you find out what the borrow rates are for short shares and how many are being shorted?

Nasdaq site has information every 15 days or so: https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/lyft/short-interest

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#52

Post by toomuchtodo »

jahlove wrote: post #46
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #38

I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.

doesn't the ride cost go down substantially if they ever get autonomous vehicles on the road? I believe that is the end goal.

Uber and Lyft only have ~2 years of cash on hand. The end goal is further than the runway. Waymo has Alphabet pockets, Tesla has billions of dollars in assets to make products to sell to backstop their FSD aspirations (and think what you will in the HN echo chamber of Autopilot, investors value it's future capabilities at something above 0).

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#53

Post by m_ke »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #38

I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.

I'm convinced that the end goal is being the last one standing. Either one of them failing would guarantee a monopoly for the other and make it easier to play with the margins.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#54

Post by adventured »

swarnie_ wrote: post #31
return1 wrote: post #21

Uber and lyft look like a charity set up by VCs to provide people with cheaper transportation. Who knows what will happen once they increase fares as they promise to investors

As soon as one of them increase prices to generate profit ill just move on to the next ride sharing app, then the next, then the next. You'd need a price fixing scheme worthy of British Airways make this work.

It doesn't actually work that way in reality. If it did, there would already be another massive Uber undercutting Uber in eg the US market and raising $10+ billion in VC money to do it. Because hey, a $75 billion valuation is sitting right there, so it's really easy: just put $10 or $20 billion into the company, undercut Uber, IPO, easy return. Everbody can do it, just add $20 billion.

What's actually the case, is the next clone will need $20 or $30 billion to fight and undercut Uber's entrenched brand, functioning system and scaled up position. And even in that case, the odds of winning against the large incumbents is low. It will cost even more to beat Uber via the undercut game than what Uber has already spent, because you have to take the market away from them - always a dramatically more expensive and difficult proposition.

VCs are not going to continue to burn massive amounts of capital trying to fund the next loss-making ride hailing company. The next $10 or $20 billion to put into an Uber clone in its major markets, does not exist and it will never exist.

Few things would scare a VC more than having the pitch that your plan is to destroy twice as much capital as what Uber did, to unseat Uber's entreched position, with nothing to differentiate you other than the speed at which you destroy capital.

That's why nobody is doing it right now. There isn't another Lyft, much less another Uber. Softbank isn't looking to drop $20 billion to fund the next Uber, to fight with Uber, in the US and similar markets that Uber dominates now.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#55

Post by strikelaserclaw »

jahlove wrote: post #46
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #38

I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.

doesn't the ride cost go down substantially if they ever get autonomous vehicles on the road? I believe that is the end goal.

Not sure if i would call this a good business strategy. Bet my whole business on some tech that might be 5 or 15 years away to truly start being profitable.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#56

Post by jkubicek »

> Most of that was down to booking stock-based compensation plans for employees, who earned $894m from Lyft’s initial public offering

Could someone help me understand what this means? Is this compensation above and beyond employee stock options? If not, that means employees own ~5% of Lyft, which is much less than I would expect.

As an employee of a pre-IPO startup, I'd love to get a better handle on the realistic value of my stock if we do reach an IPO.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#57

Post by hellllllllooo »

Is the plan for the original investors to sell their stock to regular investors before the whole thing tanks? They make their money and whoever followed is left holding the cheque. Seems like a Ponzi scheme as it's been clear for years these companies are not going to be profitable any time soon.

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#58

Post by drchewbacca »

jahlove wrote: post #46
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #38

I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.

doesn't the ride cost go down substantially if they ever get autonomous vehicles on the road? I believe that is the end goal.

I'm not sure I see the advantages Uber and Lyft have in the race to make AV's.

Intel and Nvidia have a hardware advantage. Ford, GM, Tesla etc have the advantage of making their own vechicles. Google is Google.

What do Uber and Lyft have that makes it likely they can figure it out before the market is conquered by others?

Maybe their assumption is that if driverless tech is widely available then their brand names will get them more business?

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#59

Post by moorhosj »

jahlove wrote: post #46
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #38

I don't know what the end game for these companies is. Most average people would never use uber or lyft for transportation on even a semi regular basis if those companies didn't heavily subsidize the rides.

doesn't the ride cost go down substantially if they ever get autonomous vehicles on the road? I believe that is the end goal.

Will they own those cars? Today, they rely on driver's providing their own cars. What will be the capital costs of purchasing and maintaining the autonomous fleet?

Re: Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken

#60

Post by sovnade »

whoisjuan wrote: post #8

The problem with Lyft is that they are in a poorly understood market, in second place and burning cash at neck-breaking speed. Even if they manage to start making progress towards profitability, they might need more than that. The reality is that ride-sharing probably needs another lustrum or so to solidify and that seems excessively long for Lyft in its current state. Uber faces the same challenges but its way more…

And to top it off, this entire business model is temporary. The end game for all of these companies (and Tesla/etc as well) is to have autonomous fleets. They have to bleed cash to snap up as much of the market as possible before that happens so they're not starting from zero. At this point it feels like a game of who has enough funding to survive the interim to make it to a driverless service.
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