Uber losses expected to hit $3B in 2016 despite revenue growth

chrisgd9y ago· 3 in thread

They will be wildly profitable if they can just outlast taxis and lyft...

i.e. they would be wildly popular if they just didn't have any competition?

Why would that make them wildly profitable? You have to find margins better than a taxi company somewhere and not just assume they exist because it's an app.

(I keep making this same post for some reason.)

skookum9y ago

...and outlast the degradation of their own service. In my admittedly limited experience here in Seattle, the quality of cars and drivers has been going down.

erickhill9y ago· 2 in thread

My knee-jerk reaction to the shocking scale of losses reminded me of Amazon during the dot-com days of the late 90s and early 00s. They seemed to bleed vast sums of money every quarter. And now they seem absolutely rule online retail.

Granted, it took a long time to get to this stage.

jsjohnst9y ago

The difference was Amazon intentionally spent every dime reinvesting in their infrastructure and fulfillment pipeline. Uber is pricing themselves below cost to gain market share. It could be a winning strategy for Uber, but comparing them to Amazon is very superficial at best.

CalChris9y ago

Well, that and finding out that AWS could make $5B/yr.

sctb9y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13216451

fankhawk9y ago

Google image search cab company owner and then explain where the billions in profit are hiding in the system.

Uber losses expected to hit $3B in 2016 despite revenue growth (opens in new tab)

Uber losses expected to hit $3B in 2016 despite revenue growth (opens in new tab)

9 comments

9 comments