Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares

Re:Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares by aetherson on Thursday November 30, 2017 @12:04PM (#15817318)

So remember that it's not that they burned $1.5B this quarter; they burned $3.5B (net revenue of $2B, $1.5B loss).

If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue).

Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.

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Re:Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares by hrasyid on Thursday November 30, 2017 @01:28PM (#15818161)

How about driver bonuses? Would those count as expenses, pr as the difference between gross bookings and net revenue? I know sometimes (especially in new markets) Uber let drivers keep 100% and then add bonuses on top of that.

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Re:Uber’s Losses Widen as SoftBank Launches Bid to Buy Shares by aetherson on Thursday November 30, 2017 @02:07PM (#15818537)

I believe that bonuses and other incentives, to drivers and passengers, are the source of a huge amount of expenses and are counted out of the $2B net revenue, not included in the difference between bookings and revenue.

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