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Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by grey-area on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @03:06PM (#18719029)
ad-based tech companies which seem to be hyper-cyclical

I agree ad-based tech companies are going to be really hurt by this recession. So Facebook, Twitter and Google will suffer, but particularly Facebook and Twitter may not survive the next few years. Smaller tech companies based on affiliate or advertising revenue won't stand a chance.

I disagree that Uber is uniquely positioned to weather a recession. IMO they are too early - when we reach self-driving cars this type of company will be able to expand globally and prosper, but Uber is too early to do that, they're going to have to keep trying to make money with a huge host of freelance drivers and all the problems they bring (regulatory, cost, unions etc).

They just raised $2 Billion on a 120B valuation, but they're still losing huge amounts of money per year. Uber lost $1 billion in the third quarter 2018. Those are astronomical losses, that's around $4B a year. I don't think they have any chance of hitting a profit in a recession, they may survive, but they're going to squander huge amounts of money to do so.

Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by cobookman on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @03:50PM (#18719462)
Disagree on google & facebook suffering. They are both too ingrained in our lives and sitting on significant cash reserves. Sure I expect RSU based pay to take a nose dive though.

Facebook has 44 billion in cash, Google has > 100B.

https://www.thestreet.com/story/14513643/1/apple-microsoft-g...

Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by grey-area on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @04:11PM (#18719684)
Facebook lost 7% of their value in one day today.

I don’t use them, perhaps I’d feel differently if I did, but they seem very vulnerable to me given their revenue is ad based and they have massive credibility and reputational problems amongst both advertisers and readers. Google has a broader base but are still vulnerable as the money comes from ads, and that can dry up quickly.

Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by cobookman on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @04:27PM (#18719841)
Even if Facebook has a 50% reduction in rev, they'd likely be breaking even, and not touch their massive cash reserve.

2017 earnings:

* 40B of Rev

* 5.5B cost to rev

* Gross profit of 35B

* Operating Income of 20B

https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/financials?query=income-sta...

Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by grey-area on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @05:37PM (#18720534)
Thanks for the figures, maybe they are too big to fail at this point. I’ll be interested to see how they weather the coming downturn and multiple scandals.
Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by jquery on Thursday December 20, 2018 @01:15PM (#18727440)
>Uber lost $1 billion in the third quarter 2018.

Another way to say this is, "Uber invested billions in expansion in Q3 2018". Uber is known to be profitable in almost all its mature markets. Rideshare will still exist, even if it consolidates to a single app, so you'd have to convince me Lyft or some other app would win over Uber before you can convince me Uber is going to go bankrupt. I can see Uber pulling out of non-mature markets that it isn't making headway in.

Re:Tech Unicorns Are Going Public at Near-Record Pace by tenpoundhammer on Wednesday December 19, 2018 @03:23PM (#18719188)
What makes ad based tech companies hyper-cyclical?