Not really. Again you have to look at unit economics. Do you think a taxi company can book a higher profit on a single ride using human dispatchers and radios than say a Go application (what Uber is essentially) and automated routing and an iOS/Android app? I doubt it, plus if the taxi company is to handle more rides they have to get and pay more dispatchers, whereas Uber's software more or less scales for fraction of a penny per extra ride.
If Uber is losing money it's because they are willfully pouring money into unrelated things not part of the unit economics of fulfilling rides (such as R&D into self-driving cars, upgrades to their tech stack or infrastructure, new feature development, etc). Part of raising money means you have to spend it, and actually booking losses is a great tax minimization strategy as well. Better to give out rider and customer incentives and lose money that way than losing it by giving it to Uncle Sam.
It’s only “approaching” cash flow break even and that’s after diluting existing shareholders by offering stock based compensations. Most profitable companies would institute share buybacks to counteract dilution.
You don’t spend more money than you make to avoid taxes. These aren’t accounting losses.
This doesn’t even take into account that there cost for drivers are going to go up as more legislators start insisting on them giving drivers benefits.
You keep ignoring my points about unit economics. Yea they lose money because they invest in engineering and marketing. Neither of those are required to fulfill a ride, and neither of those are fundamental reasons why a traditional taxi cab company can do a ride cheaper than an Uber or Lyft—because they cannot. They are competing against not Uber the cash burning company but Uber the software and automations. Uber’s engineering spend has nothing to do with the costs of fulfilling a ride as it’s mostly an investment into future efficiencies/features.
Uber has been around for 13 years. They aren’t a new company. Uber has higher fixed cost and has the same high marginal costs that taxi companies have. That’s not a tech company. They aren’t spending the money as investment, they are subsidizing rides. They aren’t building a moat. Have any of their investments paid off? If you look at any of the well known profitable tech companies, it didn’t take them 13 years and billions in losses to get there. Even Amazon had better margins than Uber when they were losing money because they were building out assets.
Amazon is actually a great example of a company that looks like it was bleeding money or mot making any. Because the software scales and each additional online customer costs nothing to support in terms of engineering spend, and they were aggressively reinvesting in product and engineering that made it look like they were unprofitable when really they almost had a monopoly.
Arguing that Uber is not profitable because it's been 13 years is not a valid argument. They could spend and invest more than they make indefinitely if they wanted to, and it wouldn't affect their unit economics or their potential profitability. Yes, their investment in Uber eats paid off enormously. They were subsidizing Uber Pool rides because there is still an enormous market that supports multiple big ride sharing companies (Lyft, Uber, Didi, Grab, etc) and because they could afford to spend in marketing and subsidization.
Once the heat turns down they may subsidize less, maybe even wind down engineering / product development spend, and they'd have a fundamental product that has better unit economics than a traditional taxi cab company... because again, as I have pointed out repeatedly, their engineering staff is not required to support the operation of their ride service.
If Uber is losing money it's because they are willfully pouring money into unrelated things not part of the unit economics of fulfilling rides (such as R&D into self-driving cars, upgrades to their tech stack or infrastructure, new feature development, etc). Part of raising money means you have to spend it, and actually booking losses is a great tax minimization strategy as well. Better to give out rider and customer incentives and lose money that way than losing it by giving it to Uncle Sam.