Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year
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I've also been reading about the current Google vs Uber lawsuit and, what a bunch of scumbags.
Uber lost another $708 million in the first three months of the year
Chief Financial Officer Gautam Gupta is also leaving the company.
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Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
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@masonwheeler said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
I interpreted that as, excluding their losses in China.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@masonwheeler said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
I interpreted that as, excluding their losses in China.
aka CREATIVE ACCOUNTING 101
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@El_Heffe said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@masonwheeler said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
I interpreted that as, excluding their losses in China.
aka CREATIVE ACCOUNTING 101
Is it better than Hollywood Accounting?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@El_Heffe said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@masonwheeler said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
I interpreted that as, excluding their losses in China.
aka CREATIVE ACCOUNTING 101
Is it better than Hollywood Accounting?
Hollywood Accounting is the same thing only glitzier and with more glam because
SHOW-BUSINESS ya-ta-ta-dah!
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@masonwheeler said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
@Tsaukpaetra said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
I interpreted that as, excluding their losses in China.
I followed the link, and found this...
Uber says it lost $2.8 billion in 2016, excluding the China business it sold midway through the year.
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They lost that much and then they entered into a contract with AmEx to provide $15 of credit per month to each Platinum card holder? The fuck?
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@JazzyJosh
They're losing $50 per user, but they plan to make it up on volume.
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I can't quite remember where I read it (maybe even here?) but that article I read on how their business model only works if they push everyone else out of the market makes a lot of sense, considering those numbers.
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@Rhywden Probably here:
Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part One – Understanding Uber’s Bleak Operating Economics | naked capitalism
Uber's financials statements and economics shows a complete lack of progress towards profit and no reason to expect significant improvement
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@MZH Things I hate: "part 1/4" articles with no clear link to part two.
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@Yamikuronue said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@MZH Things I hate Part One: "part 1/4" articles with no clear link to part two.
FTFY
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@Yamikuronue I found the rest of the articles by using the search widget with "can uber ever deliver", but only after trying several of the tag-categories at the bottom of the article. The awful linking must be a way of getting people to stick around and
read more articlesmake more ad impressions.
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@MZH Great screenshots there on that site:
You’d expect that the least they could do, would be to turn off the spellchecker. Oh, and to keep the program’s (Excel’s?) controls out of the screen area they grab.
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@Gurth Or just go to print view.
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The Auto Industry tag has all of them
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@MZH SEVEN part article! I stand corrected
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@masonwheeler said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Excluding the money the company didn't earn in China,
My brain tried to parse that and threw an exception.
Not mine. It is redundant, but not illogical. If it were code, there would be a dead if clause.
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the company lost $708 million on revenues of $3.4 billion
What the fuck are they spending >$4 billion a year on?
Aren't they basically a taxi company that doesn't even provide the taxis?
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@anonymous234 said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
What the fuck are they spending >$4 billion a year on?
Subsidizing their dumping prices. Basically, whenever you decide to call an Uber, some idiot investor pays half of your fare.
Using Uber is a great way to say "Fuck you, give me money!".
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@asdf said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Subsidizing their dumping prices. Basically, whenever you decide to call an Uber, some idiot investor pays half of your fare.
Ah, the old "give stuff away for free" strategy. Super good for getting loads of customers.
Hey, it's how YouTube became big.
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@asdf Plus driverless cars so they can eventually fire all of their drivers.
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@MZH said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@asdf Plus ripping off Google's driverless cars R&D so they can eventually fire all of their drivers.
FTFY
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@anonymous234 said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
What the fuck are they spending >$4 billion a year on?
From part 1 of that linked article:
As shown in Exhibit 2, for the year ending September 2015, Uber had GAAP losses of $2 billion on revenue of $1.4 billion, a negative 143% profit margin. Thus Uber’s current operations depend on $2 billion in subsidies, funded out of the $13 billion in cash its investors have provided.
Uber passengers were paying only 41% of the actual cost of their trips; Uber was using these massive subsidies to undercut the fares and provide more capacity than the competitors who had to cover 100% of their costs out of passenger fares.
(emphasis mine)
Since the 1970s most traditional taxi companies have actually been leasing companies; drivers pay a fixed lease fee covering the costs of vehicle ownership and maintenance and corporate overhead services such as dispatching, branding/marketing and credit card processing. Traditional drivers retain all of the money paid by passengers, but pay for gas and bear the risk that fare revenue on a given shift might not be enough to provide meaningful take home income after covering the leasing fees and the workman’s comp and health insurance costs taxi companies do not pay for.
The Uber model takes the contracting model further by additionally shifting all vehicle costs and capital risk to drivers. Uber takes 30% of passenger revenue but only provides corporate overhead services. To evaluate questions of efficiency and competitiveness one needs to consider the entire (corporate+driver) business model since neither business model can work in the marketplace unless both the corporate entities and their driver contractors can achieve reasonable earnings.
Driving for uber is apparently a massive scam.
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@Yamikuronue said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Driving forEverything about uber isapparentlyobviously a massive scam and has been pretty much since day 1.FTFY. Anyone who didn't take one look at this company and have red alerts immediately go off in their head is just not paying attention.
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@Yamikuronue it seems like the only good thing Uber (and Lyft?) did was to get the mobile app incredibly popular. How many traditional taxi services have a popular mobile app like that? I wonder if they could have thrived on the convenience alone.
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@LB_ said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
How many traditional taxi services have a popular mobile app like that? I wonder if they could have thrived on the convenience alone.
Mostly they don't care enough because there's not much incentive for it. They've convinced their local governments to quash competition.
@Yamikuronue said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Driving for uber is apparently a massive scam.
How so?
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
They've convinced their local governments to quash competition.
This is why it hasn't taken off anything like as much in other countries. Apart from the London black cab business there aren't really any monopolies in British taxi firms, so there's a lot of competition and decent prices
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
How so?
Because according to the article, if you can make money driving for Uber, you can make more money driving a taxi; the scam is in convincing you that it's in your best interest to drive for them instead when they offer no competitive advantages whatsoever. The way you tend to use words, "scam" probably isn't the right one, more like "deceitful advertising", which you typically seem to think is fine.
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@Yamikuronue said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
"deceitful advertising", which you typically seem to think is fine.
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@Yamikuronue said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
How so?
Because according to the article, if you can make money driving for Uber, you can make more money driving a taxi; the scam is in convincing you that it's in your best interest to drive for them instead when they offer no competitive advantages whatsoever.
Except that you probably can't drive a taxi in most places. It's also a lot easier to drive part time for Uber than the other stuff involved with driving a taxi. Also, as an Uber driver they take care of finding riders for you and handling payment. Those seem like significant competitive advantages to me.
The way you tend to use words, "scam" probably isn't the right one, more like "deceitful advertising", which you typically seem to think is fine.
I don't want to go all blakeyrat here, but I don't know where you got that impression.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
I don't know where you got that impression
It's not like you're actively in favour of ginger beer and ginger ale producers naming their products whatever TF they want
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@boomzilla Most recently from the mafia championship thread
Maybe I'm wrong, but you seem to be of the opinion that if you can trick someone into doing what you want, the blame is on them for falling for it.
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@Jaloopa said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
I don't know where you got that impression
It's not like you're actively in favour of ginger beer and ginger ale producers naming their products whatever TF they want
Correct, I am not in favor of that.
@Yamikuronue said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla Most recently from the mafia championship thread
Maybe I'm wrong, but you seem to be of the opinion that if you can trick someone into doing what you want, the blame is on them for falling for it.I don't judge games built around deception and misdirection the same way I judge commercial speech.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Also, as an Uber driver they take care of finding riders for you and handling payment. Those seem like significant competitive advantages to me.
There are hidden costs that Uber is counting on most drivers not noticing:
- Higher fuel spending
- Higher insurance costs (either paying for commercial policies or the penalty when they are caught without)
- Higher car maintenance costs
- Faster depreciation of car value
Taxi companies generally handle all but the first of these.
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@MZH said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Also, as an Uber driver they take care of finding riders for you and handling payment. Those seem like significant competitive advantages to me.
There are hidden costs that Uber is counting on most drivers not noticing:
- Higher fuel spending
Hmmm....I doubt that.
- Higher insurance costs (either paying for commercial policies or the penalty when they are caught without)
No, they have a policy that's in effect when you're "on the clock," IIRC.
- Higher car maintenance costs
- Faster depreciation of car value
Maybe. A big draw of Uber was that you could do it as a supplementary, part time thing, so you could control this, to an extent.
Taxi companies generally handle all but the first of these.
Sure, but the taxi industry in most big US cities is pretty dysfunctional, by design. If they hadn't captured the local authorities Uber never would have been an issue.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Sure, but the taxi industry in most big US cities is pretty dysfunctional, by design. If they hadn't captured the local authorities Uber never would have been an issue.
It's that basic dysfunction which is powering Uber, together with a definitely better-than-most app (and supporting services). In markets where things were less horrible to start with (e.g., much of the UK) Uber is only making slow progress, as they haven't got that huge price difference to power them. The app is still very good by comparison with the rest, but that's a much lesser factor; the people who are most likely to take notice of the app being better are the young, especially students, and they tend to have less money to spend on taxi travel at all.
(The UK also happened to have regulations in place that stop most of the worse abuses of drivers, and that was all legislation that was court-tested — because scumbag a-holes — before Uber appeared on the market. Their chances to do screwing around outside London are very small.)
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@Jaloopa said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
It's not like you're actively in favour of ginger beer and ginger ale producers naming their products whatever TF they want
If I had known that this would become such a popular forum meme, I'd have started that argument way sooner.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Maybe. A big draw of Uber was that you could do it as a supplementary, part time thing, so you could control this, to an extent.
Erm, it's a fixed value per mile driven. You can only "control" that to the point where you either drive or you don't. It's still something which will eat into your profit.
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@Rhywden said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Maybe. A big draw of Uber was that you could do it as a supplementary, part time thing, so you could control this, to an extent.
Erm, it's a fixed value per mile driven. You can only "control" that to the point where you either drive or you don't. It's still something which will eat into your profit.
Driving a few hundred miles vs a few thousand can make a big difference in terms of maintenance and the life of the vehicle. So, yes, it's something you can control to an extent.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@Rhywden said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
Maybe. A big draw of Uber was that you could do it as a supplementary, part time thing, so you could control this, to an extent.
Erm, it's a fixed value per mile driven. You can only "control" that to the point where you either drive or you don't. It's still something which will eat into your profit.
Driving a few hundred miles vs a few thousand can make a big difference in terms of maintenance and the life of the vehicle. So, yes, it's something you can control to an extent.
It's still a fixed cost per mile. You're currently saying: "But if you drive less the cost is less!"
Which is a given and nobody disputes that. The original argument stated that most people ignore this fixed cost because it's only visible indirectly.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
No, they have a policy that's in effect when you're "on the clock," IIRC
I seem to recall a big fight a few years ago when they were forced to do that. They kept arguing the drivers are independent contractors so they weren't required. A couple high profile accidents later...
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@dcon said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
No, they have a policy that's in effect when you're "on the clock," IIRC
I seem to recall a big fight a few years ago when they were forced to do that. They kept arguing the drivers are independent contractors so they weren't required. A couple high profile accidents later...
Didn't even need accidents over here. Our courts basically said: "Your drivers are earning money with their cars which makes this a business. Which in turn requires business-level insurance. And either you provide said insurance to your drivers or you require your drivers to subscribe to such an insurance on their own before they drive for you."
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@Rhywden said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
It's still a fixed cost per mile. You're currently saying: "But if you drive less the cost is less!"
But it's not really a fixed cost per mile. That's an accounting fiction. Even fuel cost isn't, since consumption varies by types of driving. but maintenance, too. Again, driving a few extra miles here and there you probably couldn't even notice. Driving hundreds of miles a week is going to make a big difference.
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@boomzilla said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
@Rhywden said in Uber lost $708 million in the first three months of this year:
It's still a fixed cost per mile. You're currently saying: "But if you drive less the cost is less!"
But it's not really a fixed cost per mile. That's an accounting fiction. Even fuel cost isn't, since consumption varies by types of driving. but maintenance, too. Again, driving a few extra miles here and there you probably couldn't even notice. Driving hundreds of miles a week is going to make a big difference.
Erm, just because you "don't notice" doesn't mean it's not there. It's not "fiction" either - it's the reason why I'm reimbursed a certain amount of money per kilometer driven when I'm using my car for school-related, official purposes.
And at roughly 30 to 40 cents per mile, it's not a negligible amount of money.
