onStrategy

The road to profitability is much harder than it seems

November 3, 2022
< 1 minute

Strategy | Business Models | Tech

Uber announced yesterday the results for Q3 2022. Here are my comments:

  1. The mobility service is now a premium, considering the actual prices
  2. Revenue from food delivery increased, but lower than food inflation
    net cash flow from operating activities less CAPEX = $358m – how can this be lower than shares issued to employees? (ie. $482 millions)
  3. “Our global scale and unique platform advantages are working together to drive more profitable growth, with Gross Bookings growth of 32% and record Adjusted EBITDA of $516 million,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO —- profitable growth? The company lost $1.2 billion (with a “B”), the number of employees reached the pre-pandemic levels and probably close to 50% cities are not profitable

When it comes to food delivery it is worth mentioning that most of the consumers are price sensitive

 


uber car

Sources: Uber, WSJ, 📷 Viktor Avdeev (Unsplash)

 

Looking at their consolidated statements I see the following numbers:
1/ $2bn on R&D. What exactly is here? Flying cars?!
2/ the number of shares has increased. This is a financial trick. More shares results in a lower negative EPS (where EPS is the holy grail indicator on Wall Street)

The road to profitability is much harder than it seems. I remain short on Uber.

Discover posts:

Twitter vs. Snap market cap oct2022

Snap vs. Twitter worth and DAU

If Snap with 363 millions Daily Active Users (DAU) is worth $13 bn, so why is Twitter worth $40 bn with 238m DAU? Ok, we are not comparing apples with apples, but the argument still stands. …just asking for a friend.    

Read more
Spotify's new design

The TikTok-ization of everything: now Spotify

Source: Spotify I was discussing last week with the students about the TikTok-tification of apps: Instagram, Amazon, Netflix, Shein, Reddit, Youtube, and many others. Of course, Spotify could not miss this trend and announced yesterday their new design app Main takeaways from the event: 1/ The user interface moved from (...)

Read more