Could they not just without any further cash infusion continue to lose similar amounts for the next three years and be cash solvent. Does that then not give a big incentive to figure out how to become profitable in the near term?
Edit- Ah yeah, "adjusted" stats are BS.
Not really. It is true that in their non GAAP accounting they broker out revenue by segment and showed that "Rides" made a profit of $631M but they also include categories for eats, freight and other bets that lost money.
But the kicker is that they introduced a category called "Corporate G&A and Platform R&D" which lost $621. If you look at this category which includes
> "Corporate G&A also includes certain shared costs such as finance, accounting, tax, human resources, information technology and legal costs. Platform R&D also includes mapping and payment technologies and support and development of the internal technology infrastructure. Our allocation methodology is periodically evaluated and may change."
SO basically they are saying Rids is profitable if you don't need to have a business to run it, ie no lawyers, HR, execs, payment systems, cloud infrastructure or employees to develop code.
TL/DR rids is profitable if you ignore the cost of running the Rides business and only look at the income that it brings in, which is true for any business that has income.
I agree that they're losing money overall. But just the ridesharing part is making enough profit to cover the entire Corporate G&A line item.
From page 36 of the filing ("Segment adjusted EBITDA" collectively references their adjusted EBITDA metrics for rides, eats, and freight):
> Segment adjusted EBITDA is defined as revenue less the following expenses: cost of revenue, operations and support, sales and marketing, and general and administrative and research and development expenses associated with the Company’s segments. Segment adjusted EBITDA also excludes any non-cash items or items that management does not believe are reflective of the Company’s ongoing core operations (as shown in the table below).
The referenced table includes $1.8 billion in Corporate Governance. That one line item completely wipes out their "Rides Adjusted EBITDA" profitability.
They're only profitable as long as they don't have any expenses. And that isn't really how "profit" works.
[1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/0001543151190...