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Comment by whoisjuan | Hacker News Reader

Just a brief scan and it looks much healthier and diversified than Lyft. Of course far from a perfect business or anything. Their revenue is 5X Lyft's revenue. Doesn't look good for Lyft's stock to be honest.

I wouldn't be surprised if after their first earnings release, Lyft stock goes below 40 USD.

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Really? The numbers look horrible to me. Both LYFT/UBER have horrible numbers. I would prefer LYFT(@80% discount to IPO price) than UBER(@80% discount to IPO price).

Both of these stock valuations are being pumped and dumped onto public markets with clever tricks. Funny thing is, many of us won't even realize that some of our money will be invested in these stocks without our knowledge(ETFs/Funds tracking indices). Most 401ks market tracking Funds/ETFs will pick up these horrible stocks in time.

Tech wizards of silicon valley have managed to one-up wall street this time, by creating a 100B taxi app. With the 10B they raise from IPO, they will try more desperate measures to try and close the gap in price($100B-$120B) and value($25B-$35B).

Depending on the voting structure of shares, many funds will pass over a company. SNAP, for example, is only in 20-some ETFs: https://www.etfchannel.com/finder/?a=etfsholding&symbol=SNAP

Most people investing in Mutual Funds and ETFs aren't getting exposure to SNAP. That may be the case with LYFT and Uber as well.

It's the case of SNAP and LYFT because they have ownership structures which don't allow mutual funds to invest in them. Uber has a normal structure; any fund that mirrors the market will purchase the stock.

https://www.recode.net/2019/4/11/18302102/ipo-voting-multi-d...

> Back in 2017, the private ride-hailing company got rid of its dual-class voting structure that had enabled its previous CEO, Travis Kalanick, to make a lot of bad decisions.

What an interesting takeaway. Certainly bodes well for the average Uber investor, but really it only happened because of Travis.

Thanks for that link. FB has a dual-class structure, but its owned by all major ETFs: https://www.etfchannel.com/etfs/?symbol=FB

If UBER gets into indices, that would be scamming hard earned 401k dollars of unsuspecting ordinary folks. Sigh... More hate for Silicon Valley when folks figure out

Mutual fund and ETF investors have historically done quite well with FB.

I mean. Objectively speaking and valuation aside, Uber's numbers are better than Lyft's. Unlike you, I would much rather take Uber over Lyft, given how extremely siloed is Lyft's market. 1.63 billion from Uber Eats is not a minor number and definitely a contrasting number that shows that at least Uber is trying to position itself as a logistics company instead of a mobility company, which really doesn't make sense (mobility is an abstract concept that I think can't be definied as an industry).

I honestly don't like either. But a plain analysis makes Uber more attractive by far.

> ... at least Uber is trying to position itself as a logistics company instead of a mobility company, which really doesn't make sense (mobility is an abstract concept that I think can't be definied as an industry).

Logistics: conveying goods;

Mobility: conveying people;

Uber is both and more. Those sectors are too small for their ambitions -- essentially they think they are in the transportation business which encompasses logistics, mobility and more.

Surely you'll have heard of Uber Elevate [0] which is a flying taxi service to augment urban mobility and of course there is Uber Freight [1], a haulage business that was supposed to benefit from their Otto acquisition, which built self-driving trucks.

[0]: https://www.uber.com/us/en/elevate/

[1]: https://www.uberfreight.com/

I'm starting to believe this is how all of these IPOs are getting funded. No sane dilligent investor would be willingly investing in these stocks. Almost entire funding therefore must come from indices which in turn are funded by unsuspecting 401K, state pension funds, educational endowments like accounts. There was a book called Modern Tycoons which had term for these accounts, something like "global river of money". Given how indices are now leveraged for automated funding of IPOs, we would soon be back to stock cherry picking it seems.

What if you short the stock by the equivalent ETF holding amount. Not sure the math is right, but assuming you have an s&p500 ETF, and s&p500 has 23.7T in market cap and Uber is 100 billion, then they represent something like 0.4% of the s&p500. So for every 10k you have invested, short by 40 dollars worth of Uber stock. If uber stock drops, your ETF drops but your shorts gain and vis-versa.

FYI I'm not even sure if what I'm saying even makes any sense or is realistic to do.

They did really well with the CEO they recruited. From the outside, it seemed like he did a really exceptional job profitably growing Expedia.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

                        --- Warren Buffett

Expedia makes money from advertising (12%), from bookings fees, and from buying blocks of hotel rooms at a discount then selling them for higher prices to their customers (66%). [1]

All of these revenue models are something that is pretty obvious how you make money at. And all of them are very different than crowd-sourcing rides for which it is not clear that the market prices is higher than the cost of providing the ride.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/28/how-expedia-makes-...

To further your second point. A whole cottage industry has sprung up around AirBnB. To me this indicates that the business model for AirBnB is working. There is no similar thing happening w/ uber. Seems to just be a question of who (uber or the drivers) is going to absorb the losses.

Most importantly he hasn't had a single negative mention since he took over. the company had a couple bad things disclosed that were holdovers from the old regime, but none of it was his as far as we know. he also hasn't had any seriously positive news, but for uber no news is good news.

but did he grow Expedia's marketshare relative to its competitors?

> it seemed like he did a really exceptional job profitably growing Expedia.

Expedia comes a distant second Booking Holdings. https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/EXPE,BKNG/view/v1

So while he may have done well, he didn't do as well as the competition.

Just looked at it... wow LYFT is losing ~1% value each day adjusting for S&P variations.

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