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Comment by sudoscript | Hacker News Reader

I can't tell if this is a good deal for Uber investors or not. As I understand it, Uber will own a 20% share in the combined company. The combined company is valued at $35 billion, so Uber's share of the value will be $7 billion (actually less, since they also need to share it with Baidu which invested directly into Uber China too). $7 billion doesn't sound too bad as an exit.

However, if Uber's China business is worth only $7 billion, and their current valuation is $68 billion, does that mean the rest of the world is worth 9x China, even though China is one of their largest and highest potential market? Suddenly the valuation of Uber's business outside China looks very inflated (even more than before). Doesn't it?

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Uber's China business was losing money before (I believe to the tune of about $1bn/year), and it looked like they weren't going to get a permanent hold in that market. Local competition was very strong.

Consequently, I would conjecture that China was never a large part of Uber's valuation. Leaving it at slightly more than 10% of their valuation seems reasonably realistic to me. Keep in mind:

* The major Chinese cities generally have very developed and efficient systems of mass public transit, reducing demand for rideshares (and cars in general)

* While China is a large country, not everyone can afford an automobile or a rideshare service. There are many reasons why scooters are so popular in SE Asia; this is one of them.

As a Chinese national, I disagree. Taxi experience in big cities in China is generally better because of heavier regulation and competition. In many medium to small cities, it is far worse. Now note Uber only compete in big cities while Didi has already been operating in many smaller cities with large market share. Yet Uber still fails to expand to where ride hailing by app should be popular and desirable.

Scooters? Everyone hates them.

Personal experience: my hometown is a medium city (with a population of ~3 million in urban area), the taxi system there is so broken. Because of the medallion system, to maximize the profit/cost ratio, taxi drivers usually operate their cars 24 hours a day with two shifts. Day shifts are usually taken by locals, and they will try their best not to serve you if the trip goes through traffic-jammed area or remote places. I understand their economic reasoning though. The worst part is every afternoon from 4pm to 6pm, when shift change happens, every taxi driver will refuse your ride request unless you happen to be ride sharing with them to their shift change stops(pretty ironic I think). So as a rider you basically beg for a ride.

That's how Uber/Didi win. You don't beg, you don't worry, you don't get pissed off. You uses an app then you get on a car with better fare (thanks to those steep discounts)

Remember, this is just one city with population of 3MM, there are more than 100 of such cities (with population of 1~3 million) in China. But Uber is not operating in my hometown, let alone many others.

Uber is slow to adopt Alipay or Wechat pay. Uber is slow in expansion.

> Taxi experience in big cities in China is generally better because of heavier regulation and competition.

The taxi experience is the US is bad because of heavy regulation without competition. Competition is the only thing that helps.

Slow to adopt WeChat is incorrect. WeChat blocked Uber from the app because Tenecent is one of Didi's largest investors: http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/24/ubers-wechat-drama-exposes...

Crap like this is EXACTLY why trusting mass communications to one company instead of an interconnected system is a terrible idea.

"The major Chinese cities generally have very developed and efficient systems of mass public transit, reducing demand for rideshares (and cars in general)"

This depends on your frame of reference. If you're comparing with SF, sure. If you're comparing with London or New York, less so. In London, the underground is faster than private car for many (most?) daytime journeys. In Beijing and Shanghai, a private car is almost always faster. Subway stations are spaced too far apart, and the walking involved in changing lines is pretty long. Buses are slower than cars even at times when bus lanes are active.

"While China is a large country, not everyone can afford an automobile or a rideshare service."

The people who don't have cars are precisely the people who use rideshare services.

Compared with the West, in China, ridesharing fares are lower, and the cost of owning+operating a car is higher. I ride Uber 10-15 times per week. The total cost of those rides is 20%-30% of what it would cost to lease and operate my own car, even if parking were free (which it's not).

Lived in Beijing for 2 decades. I think in Beijing and Shanghai, a private car is almost always slower than their subway systems. Beijing subway network has 18 lines, 334 stations and 554 km (344 mi) of track in operation and is the second longest subway system in the world after the Shanghai Metro (588 kilometres). Beijing subway also has extensive expansion plans call for 1,050 km (650 mi) of track by 2020.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway

I've lived in Beijing for the last 9 years. I beat the subway in a taxi on my commute from work to home except during peak rush hour. I work and live on 4th ring, it is a straight shot on line 10 without a transfer (ideal subway shot, routes are identical). Couple that with the subway never having seats, being ultra crowded (say hello to your neighbor's BO), and often having long lines to even get in the station via BS security, I've completely given up on the subway unless the traffic is really really bad. I also hate the subway so much that I've shifted my schedule so that a taxi always makes sense (goto work around 6AM, come home before 4PM).

Now Shanghai is completely different, but Beijing is still way behind.

"lines to even get in the station via BS security"

Yup, at Wudaokou this adds >5 minutes at rush hour.

"Now Shanghai is completely different"

I used to think that, until I started a lot of time in Shanghai. Surprisingly, getting from Hongqiao airport to somewhere in Pudong can be faster by car, even the whole subway journey is on line 2. The difference is not as stark as in Beijing, but it still exists.

"I've shifted my schedule"

Yup. It makes so much sense.

The last trains on line 2 are really fast as they skip most stops. Also really noisy as the trains are going well above their usual speed.

Wudaokou is even an extra transfer on line 13. If you can afford it, taxi will save so much time and frustration. Beijing subway is just not well designed or operated compared to taxi and ride sharing services once you reach a certain income level around $2K/month.

So true. "Every time I go in the subway, I die a little bit inside" - a friend of mine used to say this when we lived in Beijing.

Can't remember if I've even been to the Shanghai subway, but the feeling inside in Guangzhou and Shenzhen are like Beijing, but even more foul-smelling. Traffic is also really really bad though, so at least on the subway you know it's going to take an hour instead of the "30 minutes or 3 hours?" estimate you get by car.

Now Hong Kong is completely different... for now.

What is a 'BO'?

Body odor.

Ugh, this was the part I hated most about commuting on the MBTA in Boston. It's not too bad in the winter (cold) or summer (AC is on all the time), but the shoulder seasons, when humidity is high but temperatures are moderate so the AC isn't on, were brutal.

Ya, it often isn't very comfortable. Even our office has this problem, they can never see the bigger picture that humidity is just as bad as temperature for getting work done.

A private car driving from one subway station to another subway station _on the same line_ will generally be slower than a train. But most journeys require a change of lines, and most journeys require walking at either end.

But aside from that, perhaps we're just traveling to/from different places, and hence have a different set of experiences. Here are some specific examples of journeys that are almost always faster for me by car than by public transport.

- Dongzhimen area (5 mins walk from the station) to Financial Street (10 mins walk from Fuchengmen station)

- Jiaodaokou to Tuspark in Wudaokou

- Jiaodaokou to Xi'erqi

- Anywhere to Sanlitun (except on Fri/Sat night)

You're comparing the metro and the traffic in Shanghai to that in Beijing. They're not comparable. Beijing is far, far worse on both. A scooter is probably faster for most purposes than either but the metro in Shanghai is amazing, better than Seoul. Beijing is a horrorshow.

Agreed. In Beijing/Shanghai I've always preferred subway to Taxi or ridesharing services, except when it's terribly bad weather and I have to talk over 1km or so, or when I carry tons of luggages.

Uber/Didi are a nonbrainer in second tier cities and below.

Regarding the second point: sorry, I wasn't being clear. I think that the pricing probably goes like this:

owning/operating a car > using a rideshare > using a personal scooter > using a personal bicycle.

You have to keep in mind that bicycles, scooters, and other small vehicles unsuitable for ridesharing are very popular in China. Since few people own and operate cars, rideshares don't have a large market to undercut.

My primary reason to get an electric scooter wasn't cost: it was availability. Hailing a taxi is often almost impossible, but a scooter is always ready when you are.

But ridesharing means I almost never have to worry about availability, and now my scooter is gathering dust.

In some cities

... > using a personal bicycle > public bicycle

> I would conjecture that China was never a large part of Uber's valuation.

I would conjecture the opposite as Uber investors were pitched on the China growth story

> Four out of the top 10 are now in China, according to an email sent by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to investors and obtained by the Financial Times.

> In the request for money from investors, Kalanick explained just how fast the company is growing:

> Passengers in China are taking 1 million trips per day. Uber is in 11 cities in China, but plans to launch in 50 more cities that have a population of more than five million this year. These are all cities comparable to the size of Miami, Kalanick said in the email.

> Four out of Uber's 10 largest cities are in China.

> After nine months in Chengdu, the city is seeing 479 times the number of trips that New York did at the same mark. Hangzhou is 422 times larger than New York at the same nine-month mark and it is adding 200,000 residents a week.

> The company is planning on investing more than $1 billion into UberChina, which goes by YouBu or "an excellent step forward", locally.

> It is now the largest market outside of the U.S., and "at the current growth trajectory, will most likely surpass the US before year-end," Kalanick said int he email.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-china-growth-2015-6

> Uber's China business was losing money before (I believe to the tune of about $1bn/year)

> I would conjecture that China was never a large part of Uber's valuation

These two statements are not exactly congruent. Investors in later funding rounds would have expected their investment to be used to grow the valuation. In other words, they were funding the losses in China so they should expect a return.... unless they were just investing in Uber due to FOMO.

Here's a narrative:

"If we spend a billion in China now we'll make it!"

(Year later)

"Lots of competition but this time it's different!"

(Something something China)

"OK maybe this isn't working out. Let's salvage what we can"

Ride sharing is a huge deal here. I use it daily, my wife more so, most of the people I know use it. Car ownership is low, but that created even more opportunity here. And it's not like there was a healthy volume of taxi/black car activity before, the apps have just made it way convenient and much nicer.

This will be the biggest market for uber like services, if it isn't already. But it is also way cheaper here, so that changes the dynamics a bit.

Biggest volume and lowest prices.

Didi was also losing a lot of money. It was a big cash bonfire race to have the biggest market.

Startups are valued by potential so have Uber China's future value be capped at 1/5 of Didi is certainly a downer on its total value - this is the world's largest consumer market. The points you make about the Chinese market look completely off to me.

Apparently without Chinese numbers, it is hard for Uber to further blow up its growth story, according to itself, China has generated more rides than US daily.

It's not a $7 billion "exit". It's an investment for a 20% stake in Didi for $7 billion, which presumably will increase in value as Didi continues to expand in China, especially with less need for ridiculous spending on driver incentives since they will no longer be competing with Uber.

Uber probably had something in the ballpark of 20% market share in China so it sounds like the two decided to simply make peace and become profitable together instead of duking it out for years on end and throwing away billions.

Its not a 20% stake.

"Uber Technologies will receive 5.89 percent of the combined company with preferred equity interest equal to 17.7 percent of the economic benefits."

Suppose you spent $1B on a factory to make blenders + blender marketing + distribution channels, etc. Later, you invest $200MM in another blender concern for a 20% stake. How do you value / account for the first $1B in sunk costs?

You answered your own question? You don't - it's sunk costs.

As a loss obviously, a sunk cost is exactly that: sunk

One of the factors for Rest of the world vs China gap could be the ticket size of a cab ride. A 5km Uber ride in India/China/SE-Asia costs $1.5 on an average, while in developed countries its $15 on an average (10X). So, I guess, it's value over volume for Uber and markets that are on fast-track to profitability.

source - http://www.priceoftravel.com/6536/price-of-a-5-kilometer-ube...

Spot on - ubers in China were easily 70% cheaper for me (coming from the UK). I don't think the volumes were appropriately bigger.

Also seemed like Uber were going wild at the time - Easter weekend was totally free for all riders all weekend iirc.

As always with Uber you have to understand the relative, not absolute, situation.

Uber needs to not just be successful, it needs to be MASSIVELY successful. It's valued at north of $60B! If it makes a bunch of modest deals that are successful to the tune of making a 15% return on investment, and that investment is $2B, then it needs like 20 of those deals to justify its valuation, much less to grow.

At risk of pointing out the obvious, there aren't 20 Chinas. And Uber doesn't have $40B to spend on a series of 20 $2B deals.

Uber's entire existence for at least the last five years has been predicated on being a major global game-changer. Anything that is less than "major global game-changer" for them is a failure.

A general approximation in business is that the non-US market is 5-8x the US market. So if the world market is only 9x the China market, I'd consider that a very big deal.

Is that an approximation for US businesses?

Yeah - used to (once you've worked out the size of the US market) get a vague feel for the international possibilities. Very rough first-order approximation.

Didi was last valued at $28b according to press from June. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2016/06/17/didi-in-valuati...

Looks like a good deal to me because continuing to fight Didi in China was a losing proposition. Also they now own 20% of the dominant chinese ride hailing company.

I think this is exactly right. It's a decent face saving move for Uber to have some sort of outcome in an otherwise very very difficult market where they were losing. Seems like the investors in Uber China could have done better to just put the money directly into Didi though. I guess the upside was it got them into the parent company though, which otherwise they may not have had access to.

This is how you realize that the $68 billion value is suspect?

Apple win!

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