Uber reports $1 billion loss in first post-IPO quarterly results

[Karlston]

Uber reports $1 billion loss in first post-IPO quarterly results

Uber has lost money almost every quarter since its founding.

Enlarge / Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

George Grinsted

Uber lost slightly more than $1 billion in the first three months of 2019, the company announced on Thursday. It's Uber's first quarterly earnings release since the company went public earlier this month.

 

Uber's loss wasn't a surprise—indeed, it was right in line with expectations. Wall Street shrugged off the news, with the stock rising around one percent in the hours after the results were announced. Uber's stock price is now slightly below Thursday's closing price at $39.60.

 

Uber has lost money almost every quarter since its founding a decade ago. Uber lost $4.46 billion in calendar year 2017 on a GAAP basis. Uber suffered a relatively modest $370 million GAAP loss in 2018, largely thanks to a one-time boost from a multi-billion dollar deal with Yandex.

 

Uber's revenue last quarter was $3.1 billion, up 20 percent from the first quarter of 2018. That primarily reflects rapid growth of Uber Eats, which has been growing much more quickly than Uber's core taxi service.

 

Uber raised $8.1 billion in its initial public offering earlier this year, so the company can sustain losses like this for several more quarters at least. But investors are presumably expecting to earn a positive return on their investments at some point—and the path to profitability isn't obvious.

 

One possibility is that the arrival of self-driving cars will dramatically lower Uber's cost of doing business. However, the technology seems several years away—at least—from widespread availability. And Uber's own self-driving project has struggled in the last year.

 

Another possibility is that Uber and Lyft (and Uber's other rivals overseas) will simply get tired of fighting an intractable price war and raise their prices to more sustainable levels. The problem with that is a more expensive service might attract fewer paying customers. And a shrinking customer base might call into question Uber's $66 billion market capitalization.

 

Source: Uber reports $1 billion loss in first post-IPO quarterly results (Ars Technica)

[oliverjia]

These ride-hailing companies are a fxxking scam and huge bubble that to be exploded soon. Wait and see. 

[luisam]

1 hour ago, Karlston said:

Uber has lost money almost every quarter since its founding a decade ago.

I don't understand how UBER is losing money. They work with the driver's own car, don't pay salary, don't pay the gas, don't pay car insurance don't pay the GPS used by drivers and get a percentage of the entry. Their cost is managing a server which controls the vehicles in service, using an application based on GPS and Google Maps. Smells fishy

[lolsee2]

Changes in stock price are mostly about expectations. The fact that Uber's losses (despite being massive) were in line with expectations means that you wouldn't expect much change in stock price. 

 

Between their secret data breach and a statistically significant number of drivers who have committed felonies against passengers, Uber has demonstrated a lack of integrity on a fundamental level.