Uber IPO

(Alex Sherwood) #1

The IPO that seemed like it was never going to happen. I’m very curious to see whether they manage to achieve a public valuation that’s as high as the one that their investors have given them, while they’ve been private.

(Vladislav Kozub) #2

If they do get a valuation of $120bn as per the Goldman’s estimate, this stock will be shorted a lot!

#3

While no-one knows what will happen with the markets, it seems a strange time to IPO given the current shaky tech sector and that an IPO is very much a timing based operation.

(Dave Smith) #4

hmm…

(Aris David) #5

Lance Armstrong invested $100K in a fund that invested in Uber when Uber was valued at $3.7m then.

https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2018/12/10/heres-how-much-lance-armstrong-made-on-early-uber-investment/

(Dave Smith) #6

That will be us when Freetrade IPO’s :smiley:

(Andrew Clark) #7

Given that Uber is worth 32,437 times more than that original valuation he’s not done that well all things considered! :wink:

(Chris) #8

$120b valuation with no profit!? The hedge funds will tear this apart when it goes live

(Alex Sherwood) #9

I guess this could set a precedent for other countries to follow too..

(Kenny Grant) #10

Still might never happen :slight_smile: In a market where Amazon, Apple, Facebook are losing 30% market cap in months with no end in sight, it seems foolhardy to attempt a tech IPO.

I’m actually optimistic for a global company like Uber to completely wipe out local taxi services (perhaps Uber, but probably not), when they replace the drivers with automated cars in a few decades. The fuss with the drivers hurts them right now, but I highly doubt they have long term plans to have drivers at all. At that point with self-driving cars the defining advantage will be the consumer brand and the tech to manage fleets and match them with customers.

I think probably Uber is too early on the curve though and will suffer heavy losses for too long without gaining any distinct advantage. They lost 1 billion dollars in a single quarter this year. Their brand is already tarnished. An upstart could easily displace them by starting local with a small fleet, perfecting operations (without drivers) and scaling up.

#11

Yeah, Uber has some challenges. The brand, though perhaps the worst of that is over now the attention is on facebook. The state of the ipo/capital markets in 2019 (who knows). It has been harder than they hoped outside the US. The leader in self-driving is a big investor in their competitor Lyft…

(Simran Cashyap) #12

I also think Dara is a fantastic CEO, and it will be interesting to see where he leads the business going forward.

(Alex Sherwood) #13

Still higher than it’s valuation from it’s last round though -

(Vladislav Kozub) #14

Revenue for Q3 was up five percent QoQ at $2.95 billion and up 38 percent year-over-year.

38% YoY growth for Uber compared to a 33% growth for Facebook which has a 37% profit margin for the same period does not seem like a good deal :thinking:

I’d think little (compared to Facebook) Uber would grow at a faster pace with their current revenues.

#15

Agree (though I’m not a massive fan of FB either).

Uber has some structural challenges: it seems that each territory has to be won anew (the network effects don’t look particularly transferrable from US to other geographies, which is why it has been selling out of some markets). The explosion of electric motors is starting to make more efficient forms of transport viable (though to be fair to Uber they are buying electric bike and other micromobility companies). Google is ahead on autonomy and is invested in Lyft. Uber’s own cash needs. Etc…

(Big Boss) #16

Not to mention diminished networking effects in most of its markets. Probably my biggest sticking point.