Uber CEO Sees Path To Profitability Despite Bumps in the Road (youtube.com) 40
CEO of Uber, which posted a record $5.2 billion quarterly loss earlier this month, believes the company is on track to reach profitability. In an interview with Bloomberg Thursday [video], Dara Khosrowshahi said the company has "resolved all of the governance conflicts and legal issues." He said: We have a great investor base, we have taken the company public, and the company revenue gross bookings have grown 75% since I joined. We now have a path to profitability, I believe. So while we've had bumps on the road -- and every adventure has bumps on the road -- I like where we are and I especially like the position that we're in now for the next few years.
We want Uber to be available to everybody. And what we're doing now is going into the next step of introducing other transportation choices to Uber, we've always gone with the pool but for example, we're testing buses to bring the price of Uber down to the next level. We're introducing bikes and scooters for personal electric mobility so that essentially any way that you want to get around your city, we're going to be there for you... And if you want food, if you want even local commerce, which I think we will power, Uber Eats and some of the other services will be there for you as well. [...] These are extraordinary opportunities that we're funding, but I do believe that we're going to prove to our investors that we can take on a serial basis, big parts of our business, turn them profitable and use those parts of our business to fund investments in other areas.
We want Uber to be available to everybody. And what we're doing now is going into the next step of introducing other transportation choices to Uber, we've always gone with the pool but for example, we're testing buses to bring the price of Uber down to the next level. We're introducing bikes and scooters for personal electric mobility so that essentially any way that you want to get around your city, we're going to be there for you... And if you want food, if you want even local commerce, which I think we will power, Uber Eats and some of the other services will be there for you as well. [...] These are extraordinary opportunities that we're funding, but I do believe that we're going to prove to our investors that we can take on a serial basis, big parts of our business, turn them profitable and use those parts of our business to fund investments in other areas.
Translation: CEO to cash out soon (Score:5, Insightful)
Always pay attention to what they do
Not what they say
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We now have a path to profitability, I believe.
We lose money on every sale, but we make up for it in volume.
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Vendor: the more bricks you buy, the cheaper they are!
Me: load my truck until they're free.
Can't change more then an taxi (Score:2)
Can't change more then an taxi
Tesla too (Score:1)
So is the Tesla CEO: ""I am optimistic about being profitable in Q1 and all quarters going forward.". Said in January 2019. You can always trust tech CEOs.
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Randomly bringing up Elon Musk? You should get that checked out. [kym-cdn.com]
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It's being butthurt to mention Elon Musk, the pothead, who lied about investments to jack stock price, CEO of the company that had greater than expected losses because of auto sales gross losses of 19% in Q2 2019 so the stock dropped 10%?
Maybe you're butthurt your hero, who never invented anything, is not performing.
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It's being butthurt to mention Elon Musk... [bunch of business insults]
mentioning him unprompted, yeah, very butthurt.
Maybe you're butthurt your hero, who never invented anything, is not performing.
He's no hero but he does deliver, just belatedly. You are taking the myopic business view where only money matters. I take the long view where he's helped make EVs a real thing and pushed the development of reusable rockets which has become a game-changer for space.
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He didn't make EVs a real thing. He didn't even found Tesla. And reusable rockets are of dubious value, and have been around since the 60s. They never caught on because they don't really make financial or engineering sense. SpaceX is losing tremendous amounts of money.
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Asstounding [memecrunch.com]
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Wrong, being profitable is the only thing that matters, since the company has invented nothing. It's not short sighted, it's reality and how the world works.
The big auto makers will make better and more affordable electric cars, and do it profitably.
Also, other solar power companies will make solar systems that won't burn buildings to the ground with shoddy engineering and components. I'd be wary of the cars for similar reasons.
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Wrong, being profitable is the only thing that matters, since the company has invented nothing. It's not short sighted, it's reality and how the world works.
LOL! Spoken like a true sociopath.
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Not random: Uber and Tesla play out of the same book. Promising big profits in the future based on things that will never happen (robotaxis), while they lose huge amounts of money. Complete scams.
Bullshitter spouts bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
What idiots are taking Uber's eternal fountain of bullshit seriously? They have labor issues popping up all over the map with the latest one just posted about just today.
The longer they can keep fooling people into believing their lies the longer they can keep paying themselves millions.
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Yet you take Teslas bullshit seriously, even though they have labor issues too. https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
Tech bro fanboys are pathetic.
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It's no longer about how much they pay themselves, it is all down to how high they can pump their share price with strictly marketing annoucements, as they sell, sell, sell or at least try to. The market is so skittish with regard to uber, that any major sales will crash the share price but eventually they will have to bail, most probably by trying to buy other companies with uber shares as junk bonds to try to buy in revenue, as if they achieved it.
I'm no MBA.... (Score:3)
....but when you lose money on every transaction, increasing your volume of transactions isn't going to help.
and the company revenue gross bookings have grown 75% since I joined
Yes, you aren't (Score:2)
I'm no MBA ... but when you lose money on every transaction, increasing your volume of transactions isn't going to help.
That assumes more transactions have identical cost and revenue structure. (They almost never do.) There are a number of ways that additional transactions can be different, and more become more lucrative.
One is when you have initial, non-recurring costs, that additional transactions need not pay. You can look at that as the latter transactions not having those costs, or as spreading them
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Another is if some of your costs are subject to economies of scale - if you do more, each piece costs less, as with volume discounts.
Yes, but they aren't.
Another is if you can, at larger volumes, improve efficiency. If you are bringing in $20 per ride and each costs you $20.10, but if doing four times as many rides lets you do something that brings the cost of each down to $19.90, you go from red ink to even more black.
Yes, but they haven't.
"We have a great investor base" (Score:2)
I'll say.
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Yeah, no kidding.
Isn't the problem, here, that Uber isn't actually doing much? Rent-seeking? Something that could be done with an open source, distributed, solution that matches drivers to people needing a ride? I don't know if it would work well if it was distributed to the point that no one has to pay for a server-farm.
Ultimately, Uber just isn't contributing much, but they are trying to make off with a large share of the money involved.
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Weird, considering all the nations they literally ran away from when authorities so much as looked at them funny.
Someone please... (Score:2)
... give me 5.2 billion dollars to lose while proving that I'm forging a path to profitability. I promise to do something better with it than taking a piss on licensed taxi companies.
Reassuring investors (Score:3)
CEO of Uber, which posted a record $5.2 billion quarterly loss earlier this month, believes the company is on track to reach profitability.
Would a CEO admit to investors that he doesn't see a path to profitability for the company?
Dara Khosrowshahi needs to maintain the hope that Uber will become profitable one day and soon otherwise shareholders will bail on the stock. The stock hit an all time intraday low of $32.26 yesterday. Uber priced its IPO at $45 back in early May.
Uber is doomed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Uber needs to make more money per ride. They can either raise prices, squeeze their drivers more, or both.
With the pressure they are getting to raise wages (and their proposal to do just that) it seems they can only raise prices.
They are already borderline expensive for a lot of people to use their services. I very, very rarely took taxis before Uber and if Uber raises their prices to close to taxis I won't use them anymore.
I think a lot of people are in the same boat. We shall see.
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That might explain Uber's problems: they use cars instead of boats.
What else could he possible say? (Score:2)
As a CEO it is his job is to "see the path to profitability" until he quits, is fired, or company goes under. When was the last time you saw a CEO say "we're losing money, plan to lose even more, I don't ever see that ever changing", except maybe when filing for bankruptcy.
So, while he might actually see a path to profitability, his statement means nothing because he cannot say anything else.
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Poor choice of title (Score:1)
What's so hard?! (Score:2)
Prophet from where? (Score:2)
Or, what expenses will be cut?
Oh, I get it... "We have a great investor base"... let's party while we can on someone else's dime.
Is he talking about (Score:2)
Cyclists when he refers to bumps in the road
Uber's exit strategy (Score:2)
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Every adventure has bumps on the road (Score:2)
Granted, the bumps on the road in most other adventures aren't pedestrians...
tried and true (Score:2)
"We have always lost money, but for some reason,
investors keep giving us billions! We necessarily
lose money on each and every ride, but are
doing 75% more than ever before!
We have a path to profitability: we will
make it up on volume!