When you can’t spot the sucker at the gaming table
Tomorrow will witness Uber's IPO, and thousands of "investors" will throw billions of dollars into Uber stocks.
Uber's IPO filing stated such gems as it has “incurred significant losses since inception” and expects its operating expenses to “increase significantly in the foreseeable future.”
Let's not forget, “Our historical net tangible book value as of December 31, 2018 was $(7,620) million or $(0.02) per share.” Which means that if Uber declared bankruptcy tomorrow and sold everything, they would still be $7.6 billion short.
“We may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the near term or at all.”
- Uber
And then there is this rare gem:
The assumed initial public offering price of $_ per share is substantially higher than the net tangible book value per share of our outstanding common stock immediately after this offering. If you purchase shares of our common stock in this offering, you will experience substantial and immediate dilution.
So not only can we say with confidence that this company will continue to lose money in the foreseeable future, but if you are foolish enough to buy our stocks on the day of IPO that you will certainly lose money.
"Maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation is critical to our business prospects. We have previously received significant media coverage and negative publicity, particularly in 2017, regarding our brand and reputation, and failure to rehabilitate our brand and reputation will cause our business to suffer…"
-Uber
Doesn't that make you want to run out and buy some Uber stocks? No? Well, lots of people will anyway.
But wait. There's even more.
Uber’s prospectus offers only the vaguest picture of how it intends to achieve earnings that could justify a valuation of $90 billion or more.
So why buy? Wall Street’s guiding principle is that any investment’s value can be justified if one thinks that a greater fool can be tricked into buying it at that price or higher.
How has that been working out recently? Consider Lyft, Uber's main competition.
Lyft reported a huge loss for itsfirst quarterly earnings report as a public company Tuesday, but said it made strides in growing its active ridership. The stock fluctuated following the report but was down about 1% after executives' call with analysts...On a call with analysts following the report, Chief Financial Officer Brian Roberts said Lyft anticipates that losses will peak in 2019.
Lyft had a rocky start to trading, down more than 20% over the last month and nearly $13 off of its IPO price of $72 per share. The company debuted with a valuation topping $20 billion at the high end of its expected range, but its market cap has since sunk to about $17 billion.
So people that bought Lyft's IPO are down 20% so far.
Well, Uber and Lyft can always save money by cutting wages. Oops! That ship has sailed too.
Uber and Lyft drivers staged protests in some major cities to call attention to wages and work issues, but the effect on passengers was hard to judge.
...From 2013 to 2015, he said he earned $37 an hour, or about $3 per mile. Today, Parmar said he earns $1.15 per mile.
Now here's the good news. If you missed the Lyft IPO and you can't make Uber's IPO, there's still another great IPO "investment" coming down the pike - WeWork.
Neither the parent company (The We Company) nor its UK arms are profitable. In fact, their losses are massive. WeWork lost $1.9 billion in 2018 on revenue of $1.8 billion, according to an earnings presentation seen by Business Insider.
Comments
How about worker owned cab companies instead?
That would be better for the drivers than this crap. Worker owned businesses across industries would be better as a whole.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
But capitalism is more efficient!
That's why capitalists throw billions of dollars into money-losing enterprises, while marginally profitable businesses are starved for cash.
How does one define efficiency?
I would define it by "providing society with what it needs at the lowest cost/work possible".
Since capitalism does everything through incentives, what does it say that society most needs?
Bankers.
Capitalism incentivizes people that move electronic bits from one place to another with high pay.
And what does capitalism say that society does NOT need?
Food and clothing production.
That has the lowest pay incentives, because people don't need food and clothing.
So there is capitalist efficiency for you.
Indeed, the only way for our society to ensure that everyone
can obtain enough food to survive, is by having the government collect taxes from the general population and use those taxes to skew the economics of agriculture and of food distribution.
Remarkably, a large majority of those persons whose economic viability depends on receiving money transferred by the government directly from other taxpayers, are ideologically opposed to programs in which money is transferred by the government to certain citizens, directly from taxpayers. They have many, many slur words for the recipients of such transfers (i.e., themselves). They seem unaware of this irony, and reliably vote according to an ideology that treats themselves with contempt.
No so queer as folk, as the Brits would say.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
You might want a Yorkshire 'Nowt'
with your last phrase.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
was supposed to be "none", but whatever.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
People's Ride
Should a cab be needed,
we make a point of not using Uber Alles.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Me neither
But the damage to the cabbies is becoming obvious in vehicle maintenance. The cab I was in the other day, I was concerned about how well my door was attached.
I was glad to hear about the co-op. The local cab app is horrid and the national app Curb is run by a company that charges too much for anyone to sign up.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
Show me proof
that the car I'm about to enter is insured for passengers.
Most uber aint.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
So why hasn't uber folded yet?
If it's losing so much money then how can it keep going? Am I missing something?
The funny thing is that while it's doing the stock thing today uber drivers are out on strike. The gig economy is horrible for everyone except of course the people who are making money from it. The CEOs just received their millions after they cut what drivers get.
Read a tweet about a woman being late to lunch because uber is on strike. Her friend asked her how she got there then and she said she took uber. The friend asked if she crossed the picket line. "What's a picket line?"
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
What you are missing
To quote Heinlein’s
(literally) immortal character Lazarus Long, “Certainly the game is rigged. But don’t let that stop you: if you don’t bet, you can’t win...”.
It’s a casino. The folks who can afford to play will do so, but the house is gonna win.
Also "Doesn't matter if the game is rigged,
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Unsustainable business model...
With the constant hemorrhaging investor money while failing to turn a profit, the delays in autonomous vehicles and growing driver disillusionment, I think I made the right choice by not getting in on the Uber IPO. I was offered a teensy-weensy piece of the pie as a longtime driver but what sort of socialist would that make me? I haven't owned stock since the 2000s because I believe doing so makes me complicit in the crimes of the corporation whose shares I own.
I was down at Uber HQ here in SF today. I just posted a piece on it. It was a nice show of solidarity and Shahid Buttar, an SF Berniecrat who's running to unseat Nancy Pelosi, stood with us.
Uber is offering deals to riders and drivers
Crossing the digital picket line? Uber and Lyft offer discounts as drivers strike
Whoopie huh? The people who are invested in uber are going to make hundreds of millions and even billions and yet they refuse to pay the drivers a living salary. This article interviewed drivers and they tell how it's like to drive for uber and lyft. After they cut their wages people are of course working longer days to make ends meet. And with gas prices rising....
The two times I took uber I had drivers that were just doing it for extra money after working jobs that paid really well. This gig economy might work for people who aren't in dire straits, but for those that are it's wrong on every level IMO. Congress just allowed the companies that were given contracts for cleaning and other services the ability to make the people who work for them contractors which means the companies obligations go down and the workers go up. Banana republic..
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
There have got to be some fundamentally dumb shits in key
positions at Uber Alles if they can't make money delivering a service that requires such comparatively small investment in infrastructure. I mean, they're using other people's friggin' cars. My (wild) guess is that most of their loss is due to absurd executive pay levels.
Heh..I'd take you up on betting that it's a big reason
How much overhead does uber have? The office and computer system that keeps track of the drivers. What else? Uber is now getting more than 20% of what drivers get so yeah it's hard to see how they aren't making profits.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Their top five executives were paid
What are their marketing costs?
Have you noticed that everyone in TV-land and Movie-universe takes Ubers now? Cabs don't even exist anymore. How much are they paying for that "product placement"?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Then there are the banksters
Last week, Beyond Meat had their IPO. Opened at $24, closed at $65. Roughly 10M shares sold, so the company raised $240M. This means that the speculators made $400M! In other words, the investment bankers left that much on the table for themselves and their friends.
This is what happens when idealistic but financially naive entrepreneurs try to work the system. You may not agree with what BM is trying to do, but they are trying to make the world a better place within the system, which apparently means that they are, well, fresh meat.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg