There are multiple positive and negative reports on Uber's financials in several publications, but the one(s) I've found most convincing are those put forth by Hubert Horan. He's written a 14+ part series [1] on both the financials and the general reporting surrounding Uber, along with an academic paper [2]. He makes compelling points, and is pretty damn thorough.
It's impossible to know for sure, but it may have swayed his decision.
I thought those were interesting articles (that coincide with my own heavy skepticism towards uber), but see you got heavily downvoted. Are you aware of/have links to criticisms of Horan?
Hubert has been wrong since the beginning, he’s never had detailed enough financials to support his wild conclusions. Buffets offerto invest is just more proof of how wrong the naked capitalism series has been.
Can you link to any rebuttals of Horan's argument? I found his articles to be pretty convincing, but am open to reading the other side.
I'm not a finance person, but it seems like how Buffett wanted to hedge his investment would mean that he isn't so rosy on Uber that he's willing to go in without guarantees.
The available financials (read them) don’t allow backing out Uber’s cost if investing in side businesses, or international customer acquisition costs, or per market profitability. Yet he made bold claims in all those areas.