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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Here's a table of Uber's funding rounds.[1] What's keeping Uber going is Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth fund, which put in $3.5 billion last summer. They also took on $1.15 billion in debt last year. That's real debt at 5% interest, not some convertible deal.

Bloomberg says Uber is losing $800 million per quarter.[2] Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they run out of money in 2018.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/uber-s-lo...

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$800 million / quarter = $103 / second. Wow.

Wow, indeed. They're lighting 445 kg of $20 bills on fire per day. That's probably enough to stay warm at the South Pole.

Thanks for this. Knew they took on debt but didn't know the arrangement. My biggest concern about them is if they run out of runnway. People think money chases after these deals, but there's only so many companies able to do billion dollar rounds. People that are looking for 10x returns will be looking elsewhere.

Bigger sucker would be ipo

For an IPO, Uber would have to publish real audited GAAP financials. Those would look terrible. Uber's over-valuation would not survive.

Sure it would. People would buy in, it would pop, etc.

Because UBER.

You're naive if you don't think Uber already has audited financials. Investors wouldn't dump billions in if they didn't.

JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche (not exactly the model for integrity) have recently opted not to work with Uber because of its lack of disclosure.[0] Besides, take another look at that table above: not a confidence-inspiring list.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-07/banks-sai...

There's also several links to sites that already have the financial data from Uber. Either you believe that those leaked financial data is real, or you believe they are fake.

If you believe the numbers and the scope of the loss, are you saying that they would have that data and allow that data to leak, but they wouldn't provide it to JP Morgan or DB?

There's financial data out there, but Uber won't provide official financial data to banks for their customers to scrutinize. That makes it hard to assume that everything is both on-the-level and healthy.

Edit: Anyway, what I believe is irrelevant. I don't have the option to invest (aside from getting a job there) or short.

GAAP : non-GAAP :: post-IPO : pre-IPO

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