from Hacker News

Uber Says Sales Growth Outpaces Losses

by spuiszis on 4/14/17, 5:51 PM with 136 comments

• by hawkice on 4/15/17, 4:01 AM

  Losses up 6% and they're celebrating. I've been at companies like this. "We're losing money faster than ever, if I keep saying words after that you might be confused as to whether that matters."

  And if you have new or growing product lines that incorporate into both revenue and expenses like Uber Pool does, you'd see exactly this shift _without a change in the underlying unit economics_. Which means that, not only are they losing money faster than ever, but they have no mechanism to stop the bleeding.

• by pdog on 4/14/17, 6:42 PM

  > Uber said it uses generally accepted accounting principles. Revenue includes only the portion Uber takes from fares, except in the case of its carpooling service; the company counts the entire amount of an UberPool fare as revenue.

  Does this mean Uber technically recognizes more revenue from from a $6 UberPool ride than a $20 UberX ride?

• by nickcrowley81 on 4/15/17, 8:58 AM

  There has never been an above razor thin profit line for fleet vehicle operations. Uber is a subsidized taxi company. They charge people from A TO B and take a cut of the fare. The fares are so low compared to taxis because of this subsidization. The only way they survive as this app form of a taxi is by drastically raising fares. They will be too far behind the driverless car race and crash there as well. Let alone the truth of the matter is, the technology is waaaaaaaay farther away on driverless. Read Financial Times 7 part series on Uber. They're the only ones truly on top of this sham of a company.

• by jish on 4/14/17, 7:52 PM

  Didn't all of the "scandals" start in Q4 2016 in the first place?

  This is basically saying, look we were on a good trajectory from Q3-Q4.

  But the question is, what happened after that?

• by acchow on 4/14/17, 7:12 PM

    “We’re fortunate to have a healthy and growing business"
  

  $2.8bn "adjusted net loss" on $6.5bn revenue is healthy?

• by slackstation on 4/14/17, 7:57 PM

  Sales growth in commodity product that is loosing money on ever sale? I'll never understand this. Uber won't own the market. There is zero lock-in. If Lyft is cheaper this week, I'm riding Lyft.

  I sold my car over a year ago and use a mix of ridesharing and rentals for transportation. Uber and Lyft's greatest competition in my life is a small Google product where people pick up people on their daily commute to and from work and the drivers are compensated only for gas money.

  Locally, there is a company that will allow you to rent an electric car for free for two hours (it has an electronic billboard on the ceiling).

  In the future, cheap electricity and efficient manufacturing might make a world where rides of a certain distance would be free or extremely low cost in exchange for advertising.

  Transportation is a commodity. For a short ride, I don't care that much about the differences, whether I'm sitting in a Toyota Corolla or Mercedes S-Class. It gets me from point A to point B.

  In this environment, I think the VCs pouring billions of dollars into Uber are throwing their money away subsidizing Uber's leadership in commodity market. Cheaper wins. I get to choose on each ride. There's no lock-in, there's really no reason for brand loyalty. Whatever is cheaper wins. If it's free, whomever gets here first wins. If they are both available right now, it's who has the nicer seat.

  This is a race to the bottom and as a customer I'm only going to remember negative experiences with the brand. Lyft is better by encouraging themed cars but, they've stopped doing that from what I've seen.

  There's a good chance that Lyft and Uber might face huge backlash for bait and switching drivers when they roll out driverless cars.

  I'm bearish on Uber in the long term.

• by mankash666 on 4/15/17, 5:16 AM

  What a sham! Instead of spinning BS, just go public if your fundamental finances are sound.

• by pchristensen on 4/14/17, 7:17 PM

  "We'll make it up in volume!"

• by code4tee on 4/14/17, 8:16 PM

  Uber is demonstrating that they can sell $2 bills for a buck and that there's demand for that. They've not demonstrated they can establish a real business here in what has turned into a pure commodity market.

  In competitive markets a lot of "me too" competitors pop up all the time. When you see consumers just picking the one that's the cheapest (i.e. with the most VC cash subsidizing the ride) and drivers rocking up with multiple phones on the dashboard as they too game these companies it's clearly all a fools game. This industry is a race to the bottom, but at least people get to enjoy cheap VC-subsidized rides while the party's still on!

• by codecamper on 4/14/17, 8:38 PM

  hackernews.. the place for uber quarterbacking.