No, they have to rise by more than that. Your math is technically correct (a 6% rise gives you an extra $700 million), but you are assuming that the price increase goes entirely to Uber. There is no way Uber can increase prices by 6% and give none of that upside to their drivers - they would flee to platforms offering better terms (like Lyft).
If Uber was to be profitable this past quarter they wouldn't have needed an extra $700 million in fares, but an extra 2.3 billion - which is a 20% rise.
Will you notice if you pay $7.51 one day, and 7.96 the next day? What with all the surge pricing, route changes, time of day pricing, and other schemes Uber throws at you, you're lucky to get the same price day to day.
If Uber increases from $7.51 to $7.96 you might not see the difference in your head, but then if for example lyft is offering $7.80 for the same ride, whats more likely for you to choose?
I think they'd be very careful with increasing prices and wait their competitors to increase prices first so they can follow up, or else they might run themselvs out of business.
For the rates Uber charges in NYC (UberX)
Base Fare: $2.55. (NYC Yellow Cab - $2.50) Per Minute: $0.35. (Yellow - $.50) Per Mile: $1.75. (Yellow - $2.50) Cancellation Fee: $5 (Yellow -- no cancellation) Service Fees: $0 Minimum Fare: $8. (Yellow - no minimum)
Chicago: (Uber X)
Base Fare: $1.70 Per Minute: $0.20 Per Mile: $0.95 Cancellation Fee: $5 Service Fees: $1.40 Minimum Fare: $4.40
And this is somewhat transparent, right? Everyone loves getting middle manned, I'm sure neither drivers nor passengers will mind.
Getting a lift is a commodity. It needs to be cheaper form the buyer's perspective and it needs to pay better from the driver's perspective. Not sure how that works while also earning bing money for the middle man. Uber smells like a self-driving play, and that's falling apart.
They may now be looking like an autonomous driving play, but that is not why the company started.
People want 1 app which does taxis - uber fits that bill pretty nicely, and to be honest, I don't think users would really notice if they bumped prices by 10%, certainly not in London.
Lyft just isn't a real competitor outside of major American cities right now. Go to a city without an international airport and see how many lyft drivers there are.
There is very little network effect with Uber. Sure, you can hop off a plane anywhere in the world and open Uber to get a car, but that is a very small number of people overall. I would contend that most people use whichever ride-sharing service is available and most economical in their own city, and if that same service is available on the rare occasion that they travel, then bonus.
Of course, if Uber beats everyone else to the punch with proprietary self-driving cars and undercuts prices profitably, they win. There seem to be some very large issues with that, however.
I'm not even a frequent flyer, but I'd estimate that a good 80-90% of my Uber usage is travel-related. At home, I have tons of other options to get around, but on a tight schedule in an unfamiliar city, I basically default to Uber all the time, because I rarely have the time or risk tolerance explore alternatives.
One of the things I love about Uber is that I can use it in SF, Singapore, Manila, Helsinki, wherever. It also works sufficiently well that I have near-zero incentive to try out Lyft/Grab/Ola/whatever, particularly since this usually involves yet another tedious sign-up process of entering credit cards and PIN confirmations and yadda yadda.
One of Uber's massive problems is lack of predictability. When going to/from the airport I can't fuck around with surge pricing, I need to be able to have a travel budget that doesn't change sharply for situations out of my control. I don't want to miss planes. A service like Blacklane (which by the way is now in the US and is growing very quickly yet seems to rarely make the articles that talk about Uber's competition) neatly solves that problem for you, and generally has better service and more professional drivers.
I am a frequent flier and your idea that there's zero-incentive to have a backup or alternate option to Uber ready to go doesn't resonate with me. Uber isn't reliable enough to forget about other options, and as long as those exist and are viable Uber's supposed "monopoly" strategy will likely be regarded in retrospect as expensive and stupid waste of capital.
The other alternative are exec cars which Uber offers but which will often be pre-booked locally.
I think Uber could get many business travellers on board if they'd offer some rewards system (similar to airlines). Otherwise there's no reason to be loyal to Uber if a local cab or some other hire service (e.g. Lyft, Addison Lee in London) are faster to use.
If your goal is to save time and mitigate risk, then pre-book with a local service before you even depart. Or, as many business travelers do, ask the company/person you're meeting to arrange a car to collect you. Then you just have to look out for one of those drivers in Arrivals holding a card with your name.
Many of the international airports I've traveled to have excellent transport links to the city centre, primarily by rail. They're quick, cost effective and low risk.
I don't see a compelling reason to book with Uber on arrival.
While I agree with your point, rarely are the rail links less risky to find/buy tickets/navigate than simply walking out the door at arrivals and catching a cab door to door.
The two airports I fly into quite regularly are London Heathrow and Vienna. At both locations I'd prefer to catch the Airport Express train than mess about with taxis in traffic.
I was in Hong Kong a few months ago and it was extremely straight forward to catch the airport train. Very, very obvious where to go, how to buy tickets etc.
Try catching a cab from Sydney Kingsford Smith airport into the city during peak hour. You will sit on the Eastern Distributor for a long time.
That seems to be Uber's plan everywhere, and they look quite successful at it.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-uber-drivers-lawsui...
Yes and no, they are in a space which is extremely price competitive. I literally am watching Uber take a dramatic hit in my area right now. Lyft came to town and probably 80% of the drivers solely use them now, driving up the Uber prices.
Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people. Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady here and the people think Ubers a snaky company.
I realize this is ancidotal, but everywhere I go (I travel a lot, switching between Uber and lyft), Lyft seems to be more popular among drivers and riders. They simply don't use it because of price/market share. However, adjust the price or driver's and the equation changes.
I honestly still don't see them making it out of their situation.
For my own anecdote, I'd bet 75% of my FB friends with smartphones within my age range, 21-40, have Uber on their phone or have only ridden Uber. And a fraction of them will have Lyft. Among people I actually know, this is roughly the case, with Lyft being a bit more popular, but that's because of who I am/surround myself with.
[1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/27/technology/uber-travis-kalan...
I dunno. The comment doesn't seem very relevant, being basically one random guy's opinion of what he read on the 'tubes about another guy he probably never met, and extrapolating that to be some sort of argument about the profitability of a company. To me, it just kinda feels like thinly disguised bandwagoning to get internet points.
I recall people making similarly tone deaf comments about Steve Jobs around the time he took time off due to cancer, or Bill Gates in his early philanthropic days. Perhaps this particular case bothers me more than the average person because I've been through the same loss, but I guess as long as one get internet points, poor taste is forgiven?
Like I said, I think it depends on context. In this case, I wouldn't say it's tone deaf to mention the CEO of Uber being one of the main reasons you don't use Uber anymore, unless the article is directly talking about something bad happening to him. For example, if the article about his mom's death got to the front page, and people made comments about how bad of a CEO he is or he's the main reason they don't use Uber, that's not ok.
At least from my own perception, the character of the CEO usually doesn't come up as relevant for the people using the platform. On the rider side, it's usually been a matter of how convenient/frustrating their experience with any given platform is, and on the driver side, there's generally no concept of loyalty whatsoever; they just try to be on as many platforms as possible to maximize income.
https://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-call-that-boob-er-the-four-m...
Read it and weep.
Some people I know tried to switch to Lyft when all the bad PR on Uber hit, but the prices were higher so either they switched back to Uber or the more passionate ones are now riding the metro again.
And was the second app, which I deleted. Right after Facebook.
Define most people. As far as I could tell Uber has a far bigger user base and market share. So I'm not sure how Lyft could suddenly be used the most.
During the whole #DeleteUber protest it took longer to get an Uber at my house in the bay area. Lyft was quicker for about two weeks. Then it shifted back. Now I can't get a Lyft in under 20 minutes whereas Uber is usually 5-8 minutes away.
My experience is anecdotal but I see no evidence to suggest yours was not as well. If there is something showing Lyft taking over a larger slice of the pie then please post it.
Sounds like the parent is referring to his/her town. It's still anecdotal because surely the parent doesn't have that statistic but it very well may be the case in his/her town.
Where is this and what facts is this number based on ?
In Australia for example Lyft is simply non existent. And sure it's a smaller market but it demonstrates that Uber's aggressive international expansion strategy is the right one.
> Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady
Pretty libellous, ridiculous and unfair thing to say.
Does it?
"We lose money on every customer, but we'll make it up in volume" is one of the classic ways to run a business into bankruptcy. Sometimes, taking one's time is the far sounder strategy, even if a hyper-growth competitor is "everywhere" and "dominating" in the eyes of the uninformed public.
In other words, even Lyft's best case scenario would be a huge step down for Uber.
Sooner or later the free money is going to run out and Uber is going to have to stop hemorrhaging nearly a billion dollars every quarter. When that day comes they're not going to have a lot of options to stop the bleeding: raising prices and cutting back the markets they operate in are likely to be the first things they do, or are forced to do by investors.
Meanwhile, the way you build a huge multinational is by first figuring out a way to make money and then scaling it to everywhere, not by figuring out how to be everywhere and then realizing "crap, we have to actually turn a profit now".
Apparently Uber is already profitable in the US and thus can use that to finance further growth, but nothing is stopping Lyft from going back in that game at a later date. If anything Uber's best strat would probably be to refocus on the US and crush Lyft everywhere, rather than give it the room to breath it needs.
2016 numbers:
Lyft Revenue: $700 million
Lyft Losses: $600 million
Uber Revenue: $6 billion
Uber Losses: $2.8 billion
You can go into nearly any state and most countries (I think all of the first world countries and a bunch of second world ones too) and book an Uber.
As long as that stays true and Uber continues to grow outside of the US, Lyft doesn't stand a chance.
If Lyft could light up worldwide scale right now, they absolutely would have. Something is holding them back. It's likely new rideshare laws that Uber spawned due to it having first mover advantage.
Disclosure: I am a Lyft user and deleted my Uber account.
Well, except they do because the local market is simply huge. There is room for multiple competitors.
Just like we have ATT, Verizon, Etc.
It is a totally different space from taxis, where the experience is mostly fungible.
In germany and other european countries Uber is also completly useless, they have to use local law abiding apps like MyTaxi.
So no, Uber does not have a solid worldwide presence i would say, Singapore, Germany and other are clearly what u call first world...
Why's that?
Nope.
I bet you'll think that you're not a racist or a bigot, and yet you're making the exact same connection a racist or bigot would. Just because someone drives for Uber, they are shady? That's a terrible stereotype to be propagating, just like our esteemed president saying "Most illegal immigrants are rapists."
The reason that people post numbers YoY instead of QoQ most of the time is not to artificially inflate numbers. It's because lots of companies have yearly seasonality. If you looked at Apple's numbers for Q4 (real Q4, Oct-Dec, not Apple's fiscal Q4) quarter over quarter, they'd always look like they were on a massive, incredible growth trend. If you looked at their Q1 numbers quarter over quarter, they'd always look like they're shrinking.
Since Uber is sharing a very limited subset of numbers on a purely voluntary basis, it's pretty reasonable to assume that they're showing the ones that make them look good. If they wanted to show YoY numbers, they certainly could. It stands to reason that YoY numbers aren't going to make them look massively better than QoQ numbers.
And, finally, saying that you could "just" raise revenue by 6% and have it all go to the bottom line with no other effects is fantasy -- and even if they could do that, that would make them non-GAAP break-even, not "the kind of profitable company that justifies a $70B valuation."
http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/2014_taxicab_fact_...
It looks like Taxis are seasonal and so they'll see a drop in revenue over summer (page 4). Though elsewhere they note that airport fares are up over summer.
It also looks like there's a large, several day, drop over the Xmas period every year, which could potentially make Q1 better than Q4. Although I know in the UK at least Xmas rates are higher.
Still, without seeing the actual figures and just eyeballing it, it's hard to say.
As you say though, they could have decreased costs just by dropping what they pay their drivers. Ahem, I mean the rate they offer jobs to self-employed definitely-not-employed independent contractors.
(I wasn't able to read the source article, so don't know if they've addressed that).
Rainy weather definitely spiked demand in a big way (I sometimes wonder if Flywheel would have managed to make it over a few more hurdles if California had not been in an intense multi-year drought when I worked there). There was virtually no demand from Christmas to New Years, and then New Years Eve saw demand that was 10x what it was on other days. There are other extremely high-demand holidays such as Halloween and St Patrick's Day. Basically any drinking holiday, for obvious reasons, except 4th of July.
Uber is in many more markets, of course, though I suspect that a smaller number than you'd think are by far the heavyweights in their revenue and an even smaller number are the heavyweights in terms of improving their bottom line. They have surge pricing, which we didn't, and which is presumably better at turning demand into revenue than we were. Other markets may have different relationships with their weather than San Francisco did.
I would expect local competitors to exhibit far greater seasonality than any major multinational.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-14/embattled...
However, wouldn't you still assume Uber only would get 30% of that extra $700 million in gross bookings? I.e. revenue would only be .3 x $12 billion, which is $3.6 billion, still leaving Uber 500 million short?
If Uber raises 6%, the revenue Uber will decrease. If you raise the price, simply there will be less rides because people will find alternatives such as Lyft, taxi, or even public transportations.
I agree that they are competing against Lyft on price, but they will both sooner or later have to reach break-even; neither will run at a loss forever. Rides will shift between them, but the rideshare market as a whole will shrink trivially when it does.
So it's fantastic that Lyft is doing okay in the US. But Uber is playing a whole different game.
The only things Uber add to the service mix is an app and a bad attitude, neither of which create any value for me.
What Uber brings to the table isn't high end hire cars but rather UberX which is a game changer for price and quality. Finally taxis can't refuse to take you somewhere or not use the GPS. And not sure how you had a "bad attitude" experience given how seriously drivers take their ratings.
This often surprises Australians, so if you are one of them you're not alone. In my view Australia has a culturally ingrained reverse snobbery, which leads to false judgements about value and utility.
The "bad attitude" I believe is clearly attributed to Uber, not their independent not-employees-at-all contractors, whose exploitation, low income, and zero benefits I have some limited sympathy for.
Not a big fan of Uber as a company though. If Lyft of another viable competitor set up shop here then I'd be open to switching.
I've caught taxis on the exact same route twice because my phone was dead and I couldn't order an Uber. One was $48 and the other was $55. I believe it's more on a Friday or Saturday (they have some 'off-peak' fee or something), but Uber obviously has the occasional surge on those nights too.
Using Taxis, in Melbourne at least, seems to be lighting money on fire.
That's not how the market works at scale.
So pretending to know what Uber customers will do is asinine.
This. Subsidies don't scale. When you're company does relatively few rides, you can afford to subsidize rides on the order of dollars. The more rides you do however means can only subsidize rides less and less until it has a negligible effect on a rider's decision to switch providers. At that scale, all companies will start to move away from subsidies.
Subsidies can't buy the same amount of market share at scale without losses growing linearly, which is unacceptable to investors. Subsidies will decline and should eventually disappear in mature markets even with fierce competition. Heavy subsidies really only make sense in immature markets where there is a land grab.
You are assuming facts not in evidence. If you don't know Uber's price elasticity of demand, you can't predict that. It is likely that the number of rides will decrease, but, if it decreases by less than ~6%, their total revenue will increase.
That is the source of price elasticity of demand. Customers are not identical.
Some people value convenience of only checking one app more than a small price difference. Some people value the speed of getting a car and if Uber can provide a car 3 minutes faster, may be willing to pay a few percent more. Some people prefer the UX of the Uber app and how fast it is to actually compute a trip / connect to a driver compared to Lyft. Some people are submitting expense reports and would prefer to have all their car service expenses from the same provider, for convenience.
And some people don't.
Just because Uber hasn't turned a profit (which they may have, in local areas, for all we know), doesn't mean they couldn't. It's completely rational for them to price low and attract more customers if they are more able to raise capital than their competitor in order to make it harder for their competitor to stay in business.
I think they call it Taxi service, or something.
From what I have read/heard, they count all of Uber pool in revenues so this statement isn't entirely correct.
Okay, let's see them raise prices 6% in an environment with increasingly hostile regulators, increasing competition and a shallow moat and see what happens.
"Just raise prices" demonstrates a lack of fundamental economic analysis; what happens to demand? Outside of of a few city centers, people use Uber because it's cheap, not because it's cool. People will move to alternatives.
Uber is literally giving away rides, then boasting about usage. You think they can easily increase prices?
so indeed, they would need revenues to go up by ~20% to break even. that in turn means a 20% rise in average prices to break even (again assuming a single revenue source).
$7.5B bookings ((1+9%)*$6.9B from 4Q2016)
-$3.2B paid to (non-Pool) drivers
-$0.9B COGS (probably driver acquisition)
------------------------
$3.4B net revenue (GAAP)
-$1.9B paid to Pool drivers
------------------------
$1.5B net revenue (non-GAAP)
-$2.2B other expenses
------------------------
-$0.7B net earnings (or EBIT?)
($3.2B+$1.9B)/$7.5B = 68% paid to drivers (32% take rate [3])
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-01/uber-s-re... [2]: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2017/05/31/Uber-posts-impro... [3]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2017/04/15/caution...
18% growth from last quarter (note: that's not Y/Y. this is ridiculously fast, given the huge base.)
708mm loss / 3.4 billion in revenue is only about 20% under even. And what most people miss, is that the 3.4 billion is the 30% cut Uber takes from a ride. Prices don't have to rise 20% to break even, prices have to rise 6% (assuming no efficiency improvements via pool etc, which is frankly ridiculous)
Yeah... Uber is doing fine.