OT: Lyft and Uber IPOs

[jtakeda]

Let’s not forget this article.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...urce=digg&_r=0

[Tony T]

Originally Posted by fiamme red

Both companies are deep in the red. Lyft lost $911 million and Uber lost $1.8 billion in 2018. Neither company has any indication that it's ever going to be profitable. Yet their valuations have been shooting up recently.

Can someone who understands finance explain the frenzy over these IPOs?

Amazon was in the Red (or slightly profitable) for its first 14 years. (and its AWS that generates its profits) Wish I bought it in `01 for $8

[echappist]

Originally Posted by AngryScientist

not me!

they have made travel for me MUCH easier than it used to be. i would not want to go back to taking yellow cabs and scheduling limo service. too much hassle, and those yellow cabs are generally just gross.

i would definitely support them raising rates if it meant more $$ in the pockets of the drivers though.

i used to take a black car to the airport all the time, cost from my house was always about 85 or so with tip. Uber gets me there for 24 usually. i have no idea how the drivers make money in this manner.

just b/c the old taxi/towncar service were horrible, it doesn't excuse the behaviors of the new guys. Two wrongs never make it right, especially when the people who benefited from the wrongs of taxi profession rarely sees much "retribution" doled out to them

there are tons of people on WaPo and NYT (generally left leaning readership) who would rant with glee as taxi drivers take figurative beatings on the chin. Some are callous enough even when there's a literal rope under the chin involved (or equivalents thereof). Their rationale: I am a minority/outer borough resident/etc, and I never received a good service when I tried to hail a cab. Good riddance to the damn cabs, as Uber/Lyft has made my life so much more convenient. And these posts would get upvoted, a lot, as to be the comment receiving the highest number of upvotes on an article dedicated to the issue of taxi drivers committing suicides.

Truly sickening that one's personal consumer inconveniences (which, to be fair, were most likely the results of racial biases) bring out vitriol implicitly directed at the deceased drivers who were nothing more than pawns of the Taxi & Limousin Commission and taxi fleet owners, as if actions of other drivers somehow make the overwhelming burden on taxi drivers (and suicide) a-okay. And you get supposed progressives upvoting such drivel, which is effectively victim-blaming and would be called out as such in any other context.

I go out of my way not to use the damn apps. Am I paying more? Don't know; don't care. My ride from a near suburb of Philly to 30th Station was $30, and my trip from the airport back home was $50. Fair prices (as there were two people), with courteous drivers and clean (and nice) cars. This required 5 minutes of google-searching to determine what was a reputable car service in the area. Hell, I didn't even have phone service (was out of the country) 5 hours prior to landing in PHL, and I managed to secure a reservation. It really ain't that hard.

Originally Posted by jtakeda

Let’s not forget this article.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...urce=digg&_r=0

while you are at it, wasn't Uber also guilty of some other shady business (constant tracking of customers, IIRC)?

[benb]

I'm a software engineer, I worked for a company that is not in any way sketchy legally like Lyft & Uber but in terms of financials very similar and went public without ever turning a profit and AFAIK has still never turned a profit. And they're much smaller than Lyft/Uber. They went public with a history of increasing losses. Financial journalists definitely covered the history of losing money a lot in the leadup to IPO but it didn't bother anyone.

Their last fiscal year they had $250 million in revenue with net income -$55 million.

I can guess Uber/Lyft have a similar thing with where I worked, the place was a total cult. I only worked there for a year, it was way too hard for me to deal with the whole cult thing. The team I worked on built 3 different 1.0 products in a year, the company hired us to grow and make a new product but with no vision as to what the product would be. So every time we neared a possible release they tore it up and changed their mind.

Management is super bought in because if they fail it's a huge black mark on their career.

Meanwhile a lot of investors have put money in for years. They're not going to do anything to risk not getting their return.

The banks that support an IPO on Wall Street mostly care about getting their massive cut of the IPO.

The IPO investors are a mix of speculators who will just flip and regular people who don't know any better.

The presence of this company on my Resume seems to have only positive effects when anyone looks at my Resume.

It's just wacky through and through.

This mentality seems to flow through Silicon Valley like crazy.

[echappist]

Nothing apparently gets one upward better than failing upwards...

[benb]

To be fair Uber & Lyft are not even in the worst category of these companies.

Uber & Lyft have had a clear business model right from the start:

- Company Provides ride scheduling software/services
- Rides are not free
- Driver contracts with service
- Service provides customer to driver
- Service charges % of fees for the drive

There is no shortage of silicon valley companies that got to $1 billion in valuation without even having a clear model of how they were going to charge any money or who their customers were.

All you have to do is have a lot of users. They assume you can figure out a way to sell the user data or sell ads to the users down the road.

[tuscanyswe]

Originally Posted by echappist

just b/c the old taxi/towncar service were horrible, it doesn't excuse the behaviors of the new guys. Two wrongs never make it right, especially when the people who benefited from the wrongs of taxi profession rarely sees much "retribution" doled out to them

there are tons of people on WaPo and NYT (generally left leaning readership) who would rant with glee as taxi drivers take figurative beatings on the chin. Some are callous enough even when there's a literal rope under the chin involved (or equivalents thereof). Their rationale: I am a minority/outer borough resident/etc, and I never received a good service when I tried to hail a cab. Good riddance to the damn cabs, as Uber/Lyft has made my life so much more convenient. And these posts would get upvoted, a lot, as to be the comment receiving the highest number of upvotes on an article dedicated to the issue of taxi drivers committing suicides.

Truly sickening that one's personal consumer inconveniences (which, to be fair, were most likely the results of racial biases) bring out vitriol implicitly directed at the deceased drivers who were nothing more than pawns of the Taxi & Limousin Commission and taxi fleet owners, as if actions of other drivers somehow make the overwhelming burden on taxi drivers (and suicide) a-okay. And you get supposed progressives upvoting such drivel, which is effectively victim-blaming and would be called out as such in any other context.

I go out of my way not to use the damn apps. Am I paying more? Don't know; don't care. My ride from a near suburb of Philly to 30th Station was $30, and my trip from the airport back home was $50. Fair prices (as there were two people), with courteous drivers and clean (and nice) cars. This required 5 minutes of google-searching to determine what was a reputable car service in the area. Hell, I didn't even have phone service (was out of the country) 5 hours prior to landing in PHL, and I managed to secure a reservation. It really ain't that hard.




while you are at it, wasn't Uber also guilty of some other shady business (constant tracking of customers, IIRC)?

I like this thinking! thumbs up

[54ny77]

If only they sold gravel bikes, then they'd be profitable.

[fiamme red]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/lyft...ket-debut.html

“Falling below its IPO price is a gut punch for investors and Lyft,” Wedbush managing director Dan Ives said in a statement to CNBC. “This is a pivotal few weeks of trading ahead to gauge Street demand for the name as valuation and profitability continue to be the wild cards for tech investors.”

[unterhausen]

Reading this wapo article makes me realize that I was right about the greater fool theory. I expect that losses to early investors might start to add up when everyone realizes they were the biggest fool
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...=.617f98923149

[echappist]

To be fair, this could all just be normal movement. Trying to parse day-to-day movement is like reading tea leaves

[Likes2ridefar]

I see them as an innovative solution for getting Medicaid people to their doctors rather than the more common trip to the ER.

It could save billions in health care costs.

[verticaldoug]

Originally Posted by echappist

To be fair, this could all just be normal movement. Trying to parse day-to-day movement is like reading tea leaves

Facebook cratered after the IPO because people had doubts about its ability to monetize mobile. It solved the problem and it up 800% from the low.

Snapchat rallied 50% on the IPO, but is now -36% from IPO price because it hasn't figured out how to monetize and compete against facebook.

Which is Lyft?

[54ny77]

like uber, it's a glorified taxi hailing app that a lot of eyeballs go to, myself included.

thank goodness they've figured out how to deliver cups of coffee from starbucks and crap food from taco bell using uber eats.

because that's what the world needs.

Originally Posted by verticaldoug

Which is Lyft?

[alancw3]

this can't be good news for investors:

https://www.ccn.com/lyft-stock-plung...less-investors