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Uber S-1

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Re: Uber S-1

#91

Post by inverse_pi »

gigatexal wrote: post #19

What’s there to see? What’s their value add? They’re not going to be profitable until driverless cars are a legit thing or they pivot into something with higher margins. This IPO will make incumbent banks a cool mint and early engineers paper millionaires but will hopefully blow up and let capital into companies that actually have a chance of staying solvent without successive massive influxes of cash.

> and early engineers paper millionaires

actual millionaires not paper millionaires :).

> but will hopefully blow up

why do you wish others to fail so bad?

Re: Uber S-1

#92

Post by jjeaff »

aphextron wrote: post #41
partingshots wrote: post #18

So... Let me see if I have this straight: 1. Uber is unprofitable and the only way it can become profitable is to get SDC's 2. Uber is significantly (years) behind Waymo in the SDC space. 3. Waymo will launch SDC taxi services first meaning: - When it puts in an order for SDC components no one else is going to be buying in bulk and thus it can have effectively 100% of capacity of these specialized equipment makers -…

Autonomous cars won’t be proprietary to each manufacturer or company. Once someone has perfected their system, everyone else will drop what they are doing and simply buy it like an OS. It’s all in the software; hardware required (cameras, radar, GPUs) is already cheap and ubiquitous. My money is on Tesla or comma.ai for this.

Why Tesla? They seem to be near the bottom of the pack when it comes to self driving capability.

Re: Uber S-1

#93

Post by antwerpen »

panarky wrote: post #35
partingshots wrote: post #18

So... Let me see if I have this straight: 1. Uber is unprofitable and the only way it can become profitable is to get SDC's 2. Uber is significantly (years) behind Waymo in the SDC space. 3. Waymo will launch SDC taxi services first meaning: - When it puts in an order for SDC components no one else is going to be buying in bulk and thus it can have effectively 100% of capacity of these specialized equipment makers -…

> can't imagine how Uber is worth anything If the operation doesn't make an economic profit, and if there isn't sufficient moat to defend the operation until it can become profitable, then I agree with you it's not worth anything. But in fact, Uber does have a massive moat -- its network of drivers and riders in thousands of cities around the world. No competitor is even close. It takes tremendous capital expenditure…

> Uber does have a massive moat -- its network of drivers and riders

The network of drivers would be rendered obsolete by SDC

Re: Uber S-1

#94

Post by kgwgk »

The trend in their Core Platform Contribution Margin ("a useful indicator of the economics of our Core Platform", essentially ignoring all the costs apart from payments to drivers and restaurants) is not very uplifting:

         Q1  Q2  Q3  Q4
  2017  -8% -0% -3%  9%
  2018  18% 15%  9% -3%
"We also expect our Core Platform Contribution Margin to decline in the near term due to, among other factors, competition in Ridesharing and planned significant investments in Uber Eats, based upon our long-term growth expectations for Uber Eats. Our Uber Eats Take Rate has declined in recent periods, and may continue to decline, as we onboard large-volume restaurants at a lower service fee and restaurants with lower average basket sizes, and as we invest in more nascent and competitive markets, such as India."

Re: Uber S-1

#95

Post by Karunamon »

localhostdotdev wrote: post #87
partingshots wrote: post #18

So... Let me see if I have this straight: 1. Uber is unprofitable and the only way it can become profitable is to get SDC's 2. Uber is significantly (years) behind Waymo in the SDC space. 3. Waymo will launch SDC taxi services first meaning: - When it puts in an order for SDC components no one else is going to be buying in bulk and thus it can have effectively 100% of capacity of these specialized equipment makers -…

you forgot option B: raise prices, reduce costs

The only issue there is that Uber hasn’t driven out the local livery companies, and Uber’s presence forced many of them to invest in infrastructure. If the rides get too expensive, people will just go back to taxis.

Re: Uber S-1

#96

Post by Marazan »

fullshark wrote: post #67
partingshots wrote: post #18

So... Let me see if I have this straight: 1. Uber is unprofitable and the only way it can become profitable is to get SDC's 2. Uber is significantly (years) behind Waymo in the SDC space. 3. Waymo will launch SDC taxi services first meaning: - When it puts in an order for SDC components no one else is going to be buying in bulk and thus it can have effectively 100% of capacity of these specialized equipment makers -…

You can't imagine any scenario under which an 11 billion dollar money printing machine which is growing and costs 11 billion + 3 billion to run can turn cash flow positive?

When your business is selling $10 for $5 then no, I cannot see a way to turn cash flow positive.

Re: Uber S-1

#97

Post by sixhobbits »

> The Company has from time to time issued nonrecourse loans to certain employees for the exercise of stock options or for personal use. As of December 31, 2017 and 2018, the total outstanding employee loan balances were $21 million and $16 million, respectively. A total of 16 million and 10 million shares were pledged as collateral to secure the loans as of December 31, 2017 and 2018, respectively.

Is loaning 20 million dollars to employees for personal use as dodgy as it sounds?

Re: Uber S-1

#98

Post by ClassyJacket »

admax88q wrote: post #65
smallgovt wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't Uber become profitable by raising prices and lowering costs? They have $40B in gross rideshare bookings and $3B in real losses for 2018. Let's assume 20% of their costs are fixed and 80% are variable. What might happen if they raise prices by 10%? Gross bookings drop by 20% / Revenue per booking increase by 10% => $35.2B in gross bookings Variable costs drop by 30% (due to lower driver acquisition costs since t…

If we're just making up numbers why not assume you'll only drop gross bookings by 0%, or increase bookings even! Anything can be made profitable if you just invent numbers.

The given numbers are not ridiculous, so it's just as fair to assume they can reach profitability as to assume they can't.

Re: Uber S-1

#99

Post by iaabtpbtpnn »

granzymes wrote: post #13
kornish wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We have incurred significant losses since inception and may never achieve profitability" is pretty standard in S-1s. Nothing particularly interesting in these sentences.

This exact comment chain seemingly occurs in every S1 post.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, companies going public used to already make at least _some_ money...

Re: Uber S-1

#100

Post by notyourwork »

aphextron wrote: post #41
partingshots wrote: post #18

So... Let me see if I have this straight: 1. Uber is unprofitable and the only way it can become profitable is to get SDC's 2. Uber is significantly (years) behind Waymo in the SDC space. 3. Waymo will launch SDC taxi services first meaning: - When it puts in an order for SDC components no one else is going to be buying in bulk and thus it can have effectively 100% of capacity of these specialized equipment makers -…

Autonomous cars won’t be proprietary to each manufacturer or company. Once someone has perfected their system, everyone else will drop what they are doing and simply buy it like an OS. It’s all in the software; hardware required (cameras, radar, GPUs) is already cheap and ubiquitous. My money is on Tesla or comma.ai for this.

My understanding is Tesla and comma.ai have taken a software focused approach with limited hardware. Others like waymo have taken a hardware approach with more sophisticated sensors. What makes you feel Tesla/Comma.ai will win?
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