
Uber Q2 financials - tmh79
https://www.axios.com/exclusive-uber-financials-2475912645.html
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WisNorCan
“Uber had $6.6 billion in cash at quarter's end, down from around $7.2 billion
at the end of Q1 ... Uber's global ride-share business was margin positive
last quarter, which is a flip from Q1.”

Uber is on a loss run rate of $2.4 billion annually mainly from the US market.
The questions become:

* Given that global is positive, what is the loss in US? What will it take to flip US to positive? What will Lyft do?

* Can Uber keep global markets positive or will they have similar challengers that will force additional investment?

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malandrew
You can't just extrapolate out to 2.4B. Just one quarter ago, that same
extrapolation would have been more than 2.8B. They are improving their
efficiency while increasing their revenues. I wouldn't be surprised if that
loss run rate is $2.0B flat by end of Q4 while gross revenues continue to
rise.

Lyft on the other hand has losses almost twice as high as Uber's relative to
gross bookings. People accuse Uber of buying market share, but the truth is
that Lyft is the one actually buying market share instead of earning it.

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WisNorCan
Sure you can. It is not obvious what the right methodology would be:

* Should you assume that losses are going to get worse? Lyft raised their largest round so far: $600M at $7.5 Billion. Presumably, they are going to use that money to get even more aggressive. I hear that some US markets are already a mess for Uber. Others are good.

* Should you assume it is going to get better? In the past quarter it has, so you might want to assume that it will continue. Also, I don't know if I trust Uber's financial reporting. This is clearly a PR move and you have a lot of choices in private accounting.

Assuming steady state does not strike me as an unreasonable way of
forecasting.

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malandrew
Losses may or may not get worse. AFAIK, they have gotten better every quarter
since China was sold off. Assuming steady state or steady state of change are
both reasonable ways of forecasting. A strong trend line spanning several
quarters better supports the latter in this case.

For what's its worth, I recently saw losses as a percent of gross bookings
posted elsewhere: Lyft at 13% vs Uber at 8.5%. Are you assuming that Lyft will
increase subsidies after this new round of funding? If so, that will only
worsen its losses as a percent of gross bookings. Furthermore, that isn't
Lyft's biggest round. They raised $1B in January 2016.

Uber just needs to remain more efficient than its competition in all markets,
which is easier to do with global operations and multiple business lines that
are easy to scale out.

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forthefuture
Can someone explain to a layman how a company losing $600M every 3 months,
with $6B remaining of $12B raised (50% loss over 8 years) is "worth" $62B?

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onion2k
The long term goal for Uber is to build a global monopoly of self-driving
taxis in a world where no one owns their own car. That would be worth
_trillions_.

For a long time they looked like they might manage it, but things haven't been
going well lately. The latest valuation doesn't factor that in.

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josephmerz
Maybe if they were the only ones working on autonomous vehicles plus they may
not come out well liked... it's not looking like they will in my opinion

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ShinTakuya
Even if they don't get the first self driving vehicles on the market they're
still in the best position to partner with whoever does and make slightly less
but still a fuck tonne of money.

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11thEarlOfMar
I'm interested in how the tipping will enable Uber to really focus drivers on
service. Tips are likely to be a pretty strong indicator for what customers
want, and may be optimized by Uber should they choose to do so. I assume that
100% of the tip amount goes to the driver, but is that actually true? Uber
does have an expense in adding the feature to it's app & operation.

Uber will collect a lot of data that they can share with drivers regarding
what they can do to increase tips. Basics like keep a clean car, or how much
to chat with customers, or perhaps even customer-specific services like 'don't
speed at all', or 'get out and open the door' for them, or, 'likes the car
temp at 80 degrees...'.

Moreover, it can indicate what cities or localities tip best, what time of
day, what types of people tip well, ...

I am trying to think of another platform better suited to recording this type
of data, but it's not coming to mind. Will Uber use it to benefit customers
and drivers, or, abuse it for it's own gain?

