U ber has big plans. The ride-hailing service wants to ferry the world around in self-driving cars and on electric scooters, deliver our takeouts and groceries by drone, and ship freight via robot trucks. But first Uber needs to answer a big question: will it ever make any money? Uber went public in May in one of the most anticipated initial public offerings in years. To say it stalled would be an understatement. On Wednesday Uber releases its second set of earnings as a public company. The update comes after the firm announced it was cutting jobs as it tries to get a grip on its runaway spending. Many of our teams are too big, which creates overlapping work, makes for unclear decision owners, and can lead to mediocre results. In June, Khosrowshahi let go two members of his executive team: Barney Harford, the chief operating officer, and Rebecca Messina, the chief marketing officer. But the question of whether Uber is a company with a bad business model, or a company with bad management and a good model, or bad in both areas, has yet to be answered. The question for investors is whether turmoil at Uber has been resolved.
Ride-hailing dominates revenue, but freight and food delivery are growing.
Uber is the quintessential two-sided marketplace, but the real mechanics and drivers of its business are poorly understood. We look at where Uber makes money, where it spends it, and what profitability looks like. As one of the fastest-growing and most controversial startups to ever come out of Silicon Valley, Uber has always upset expectations. In an industry where keeping your cost of customer acquisition low is key to scaling your growth, Uber has been comfortable spending huge sums acquiring drivers and incentivizing users. With its much-anticipated IPO last week, Uber finally opened itself up to the scrutiny of the public markets. So far, the results have not been encouraging. The company priced shares at the the bottom of the range. This was the ninth worst IPO debut in history in terms of share price drop.
Driver rewards: $299 million
Ride-hailing dominates revenue, but freight and food delivery are growing.
Uber is an even bigger company that loses even more money, so it stands to reason that Uber is worth more than Lyft. But how? It is not compelling. But in an industry where everyone is losing money, the best margin is still negative. Uber is supposed to be just a platform, connecting drivers who want to sell their services with riders who want to buy them. Some platforms let sellers and buyers name their own prices — eBay, for example — but one of the functions Uber provides is setting ride prices. Uber has two core goals when it sets prices: One is to ensure that there are roughly equal numbers of buyers and sellers in any given place — there should be enough drivers to serve the people trying to call an Uber now, but not so many drivers that they mostly sit idle — and the other is to set a wide-enough spread between fares and driver pay so that Uber makes a profit.
Believe it or not, these ads work. And in alone , this number spiked to 63 percent in just that single year. Source: The Brookings Institution. Because of these lofty ads, many drivers have quit their full-time jobs and turned to Uber to make ends meet. While being an Uber driver can be great, it does have risks. Based on this experience I used to think that Uber was a worthwhile side gig, and would often recommend it to others. After asking around, our team found that more often than not, the earnings these drivers pull in fall well below their expectations, and there seems to be a bit of confusion as to how much Uber drivers get paid. So to clear up the confusion, our team created a survey that measured driver earnings and satisfaction to finally get some answers.
Go On, Tell Us What You Think!
It’s a tremendous amount of money for any company, though a major chunk was thanks to one-off expenses, and the spending is set to decline in coming periods, the mney said. Most Wall Street analysts viewed the quarter as in line with what kber expected, even as certain line items might have disappointed. Some even suggested the big sell-off was a buy-the-dip opportunity. This was, by far, the largest factor in Uber’s loss. Many of the recipients of these shares will be os to sell their stock soon, depending on when their specific lockup period ends. Lyft, Uber’s biggest US competitor, moved its date for that period to end forward to August 19 from a date in September that coincided with the company’s earnings quiet period. Regardless, many investors ignore the expense of mony compensation because it is, at least initially, a noncash cost. Uber also spent heavily on driver rewards connected to its IPO. Khosrowshahi told CNBC on Friday morning that these one-off charges, while painful, were well-deserved and important to retaining drivers and talent. Research and development was Monej biggest operating expense on its income statement. Between its Advanced Ks Group, which is developing self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, Toronto, and San Francisco; New Mobility, which is launching new e-bikes and adding public-transit options to Uber’s app; Elevate, the unit dedicated to making flying taxis a reality; and improvements to its core ride-hailing business’ dispatching, routing, and fare algorithms; there’s plenty to spend money on. Research and development expenses consist primarily of compensation expenses for engineering, product development, and design employees, including stock-based compensation, expenses is uber making money with ongoing improvements to, and maintenance of, our platform offerings, and ATG and Other Technology Programs development expenses, as well as allocated overhead. We expense substantially all research and development expenses as incurred. Uber’s general and administrative spend includes rent for office space around the world, legal counsel, and human resources.
Comments
Post a Comment