[HN Gopher] Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Y...
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Uber Announces Results for Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019
Author : gok
Score : 64 points
Date : 2020-02-06 21:07 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (investor.uber.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (investor.uber.com)
| newfeatureok wrote:
| I wonder how Uber would do if the 2008 financial crisis were to
| repeat in say, 2022. Tech companies in particular are in for a
| surprise if a recession of that magnitude happens again.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I think a company like Uber would probably do well. The whole
| gig economy was born out of the 2008 financial crisis
| tmh79 wrote:
| a lot of the markets they operate in have had large recessions
| that they have done well in (IE Brazil). Operating theory is
| that on the margin, (for riders) people decide to own cars less
| and use alternatives more as cars are expensive and require
| large upfront costs but things like uber do not and (on the
| driver side) people have less alternatives to make money
| (higher paying, more stable jobs with benefits) so the uber
| driver gig is more appealing and driver acquisition costs are
| lower.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Uber would do well because there would be a flood of people
| with more free time and looking to make quick cash with their
| cars.
| nknealk wrote:
| My highlights from the accounting statements (disclaimer: I'm 2
| years into my MBA):
|
| * They put up $1.2B as collateral for some kind of insurance
| (looks like rider insurance, but it's unclear). From the
| footnotes: "In Q4 2019, James River Group withdrew all funds held
| in trust as collateral for current and future claim settlement
| obligations under the indemnification agreement. The $1.2 billion
| of operating cash outflow for 2019 represents this withdrawal of
| collateral from restricted cash. This change in the form of
| collateral had no impact on our claim settlement obligations or
| insurance reserves." Sounds like maybe their insurer dropped
| them?
|
| * Under "Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Measures" -- the driver
| incentives are unreal. To deliver $734M of gross revenue on Eats
| in Q4, they paid out $315M in driver incentives. From the
| "Segment Adjusted EBITDA" at the top, Eats had EBITDA of (461).
| As a SWAG, for $1 in sales, they pay out about $0.42 in driver
| incentives and another $1.20 in all other costs (ie. the
| restaurant's cut for the food itself, operations support,
| marketing, normal driver's fees, etc).
|
| * As a counter point to the above, to render $3B in rides revenue
| they paid $0.007B in driver incentives.
| tmh79 wrote:
| RE: eats incentive spend. Its a cash bonfire with Doordash and
| UE competing domestically, and a lot of other softbank funded
| delivery groups including uber eats competing in south america.
| It seems like that late stage financing has dried up so likely
| to see rationalization in this vertical.
| tmh79 wrote:
| Forecasting EBITDA profitability by Q4 2020
| nappy-doo wrote:
| EBITDA profitability isn't profitability. It's profitability on
| all but accounting expenses, which are real expenses. It would
| be like saying, "I made 100k last year, before I paid my taxes,
| my mortgage, and my health insurance; but, I still made
| 100k!!!!!"
|
| EBITDA is a terrible accounting metric that people use to hide
| REAL costs to doing business.
|
| (Note there are reasons to use EBITDA, but in non-comparison
| environment [ie, an environment where you're talking about
| absolute metrics], it makes no sense.)
| [deleted]
| misun78 wrote:
| "Rides produced $742 million in EBITDA, up some 281%"
|
| Time for the narrative of Uber burning VC money/subsidizing
| rides/selling-$2 bills-for-$1 to die?
| busterarm wrote:
| Maybe. Uber has more than doubled in price for me for just
| about any given fare over the last year. I use it much less
| than I used to. I'd like to see rides up as well as revenue
| from those rides.
| majormajor wrote:
| Uber costs 2 to 3 times as much for me as it did 4 years ago,
| so yeah, I think that's changed.
|
| But I've also been riding much less.
| csomar wrote:
| You might have been riding much less but they are booking
| more rides (20% more than last year). So it's not that bad.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| In which regions though?
| baby wrote:
| Uber has got much more expensive to me too. I remember riding
| in chicago was cheaper than taking the L. But I'm still using
| it often, I don't have a car.
| tempsy wrote:
| they were already profitable on rides in their most mature
| cities
| [deleted]
| awa wrote:
| It's "Adjusted EBITDA" which being a non-GAAP measure in this
| case excludes Corporate G&A and Platform R&D. This line item
| was -644 million.
| misun78 wrote:
| Source?
| [deleted]
| H8crilA wrote:
| The OP link, of course.
|
| Scroll to the GAAP section, earnings are under "CONDENSED
| CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS".
|
| The GAAP loss per quarter is $1.096B, which comes out to
| $0.64 per share.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Cash flow from operations was negative 3 billion
| excluding the "cash held by insurer" and capex was 0.5
| billion. This puts unlevered free cash flow at closer to
| negative $3.5B.
|
| The way they are breaking out segments seems to imply
| that theres heavy losses in non-North America so of they
| were to shut off the rest of world stuff maybe it looks
| better.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Does this imply a ~1 year runway considering $11B
| cash/cash equivalents on hand?
| texasbigdata wrote:
| I believe that was an annual number. Not sure runway
| makes sense for an entity this big. They recognized
| billions of stock comp. There's enough enterprise value
| to generate cash in a variety of ways. The company might
| kick and scream to not do anything dilutive but its hard
| to see a scenario where they couldn't access the capital
| markets if backed against the wall (albeit at maybe an
| expensive rate).
|
| But I'm not intimately familiar with this stock.
| [deleted]
| tryptophan wrote:
| It hasn't been true for a while. On a per-ride basis in their
| developed service areas they have been profitable for a long
| time.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| And yet they are still losing money. Odd, that.
| n_o_u wrote:
| growth tends to do that.
| vikramkr wrote:
| But what sort of growth are they spending money on - and
| is what they're spending money on worth it? If you're
| spending money on free rides, you might be getting users
| that aren't going to be profitable long term. If you're
| spending that money on r&d moonshots like developing your
| own self driving cars, then it's not looking so good for
| you when tesla/waymo/etc are so much further ahead. And
| if economies of scale begin working against you, where as
| you get more and more drivers, they begin to organize and
| lobby and push to become classified as employees and
| raise your costs, then you might be facing a reconing
| very soon.
| ProAm wrote:
| How long does a company need to grow for? They are 11
| years old and there is arguably only 1 competitor.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| Arguably one competitor if you just consider North
| America and exclude taxis or anything outside of their
| rideshare business.
| treebornfrog wrote:
| Exactly.
| harryh wrote:
| Amazon was essentially break even for longer than that.
| Worked out ok there.
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