Uber Joins the S&P 500
wsj.com
wsj.com
Uber reported net income of $221 million on $9.29 billion in revenue in the third quarter, and in the past four quarters altogether it generated over $1 billion in profit.
> The Company gained nothing and remains a bagholder in its equity investments, including DiDi, Aurora, Grab Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: GRAB), and Zomato stakes.
Uber is turning into a financial company like other transportation giants (Delta, AA). Maybe for the best, as I think everyone understands that self driving Uber is a pipedream.
Uber's self-driving dreams rest on a partnership with Waymo (and whoever else eventually produces a safe autonomous vehicle).
Not a nail in the coffin, but it doesn’t exactly spark confidence in their own efforts.
If you want unfuckable metrics, look at cash flow. Uber's operations are cash-flow positive [1].
[1] https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_earnings/2023/q3/e...
Shares aren’t cash. No need to double count.
The point (which was made somewhere by Unhedged in the FT (but I am failing at finding the article)) is that cash flow is somewhat deceptive for companies that compensate their employees with cash.
Notably, this quarters $221 million in profit was not driven by unrealized gains.
I've noticed this stuff occasionally over the years, and started collecting the evidence recently... it happens a lot more often than you'd think.
> The amount of effort the server devotes to your ordre is the same regardless of what the owner charges for your meal. So tip on the original, undiscounted price. And tip at least 20 percent.
Kind of funny, when it results in a higher tip I should consider the amount of effort.
I expect if I said I was only tipping $2 on a $100 bottle of wine at a restaurant because it isn’t any extra effort to grab an expensive bottle the poster might not agree.
Of course it does. Their drivers presumably want a certain level of total compensation, but they dont care who it comes from. The higher Uber is able to convince people to tip, the less they have to offer in wages to retain drivers.
> The higher Uber is able to convince people to tip, the less they have to offer in wages to retain drivers.
this is unfounded speculation.
your complaint reads like you want to fault uber for not scamming the drivers. as someone else pointed out, after years of saying that uber would never be profitable it makes sense that there's some moving the goalposts here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/comments/xyk7cx/uber_st...
In general, never tip on ubereats.
Yup...that's why the stock has done so well despite the insistence or chorus by the media since 2010 of how Uber is going to go bankrupt or burning cash. It's like Tesla in this regard--years of losses on capital expenditures--followed by huge and sudden profit as the initial capital outlay pays off massively.
Apparently Uber had an effective tax rate of -22%(?) in the last quarter.
No idea if it's a mistake or not.
Does that mean the government is giving them 22% of their revenue?
How and why?
and here is Uber a decade later , and the stock keeps going up. Uber is highly cash flow positive on operations, to the tune of $600 million from its most recent earnings report or also comparable to Tesla in 2021, which the experts in the media were certain would be an impossibly. During Covid it initiated to a successful delivery business, Uber Eats.
I think this shows how the financial media can be disregarded as a useful source of investment advice or insight. The VCs and other investors who keep investing in uber despite losses were right, as , similar to Amazon, they knew the losses were temporary and to build the outlay/infrastructure of Uber's business.
to be fair, the actual financial analysts have been very bullish on uber for a long time. the stock has been overweight or buy for most of its public history, at least by my recollection (I own a chunk of stock so i've been paying some attention).
it's on forums like this though, where folks are inserting their desire for uber to fail because they don't like the company or the (former) executives or whatever, that I hear the bankruptcy drum being beaten.
A lot of things in finance and markets are self fulfilling prophecies like this, for example just look at the fed. They are the classic example of expectations > action.
Uber is cash-flow positive [1].
Due to stock-based compensation, many profitable tech firms hit this metric before GAAP. Put another way, if you owned the entire business, you could sustainably extract those profits.
[1] https://s23.q4cdn.com/407969754/files/doc_earnings/2023/q3/e...
Simplest thing would be to find an actively-managed mutual fund that focuses on what you want. (Warning: What you want is probably to lose money compared to the rest of the market.)
You can pretty trivially DIY that.
(Disclosure: The CEO is an acquaintance, but I have no financial interest.)
Furthermore, Lyft being borderline bankrupt helps Uber take more advantage of the most profitable and largest market.
I can absolutely see this happening for transit companies like Waymo that are still in the maturation process of developing novel infrastructure.
Saying Uber is "just an app" isn't a strong argument. It overlooks the marketplace dynamics that in themselves are a huge moat. You can also say "Instagram" is just an app.. But good luck trying to recreate that level of success.
All it takes is a new app to offer better commissions for drivers and riders. I am not so sure that Uber has a very sticky customer base
Alaska Air Group, Sealed Air Corp, and SolarEdge are out.
Except it's not.