[emilsedgh]

How much capital does Uber have left?

My understanding was that they only had a few billion dollars left and were burning > 1B a quarter.

And they are still not profitable right?

On what basis exactly are they going to IPO? What's the angle for buying shares of a company that is losing so much money?

[googlemike]

$50b in revenue last year is nothing to scoff at. They have levers for profit but instead re-invest every dollar. Your argument sounds exactly like what people said about Amazon years ago.

[jussij]

That $50b figure is not their revenue, but their gross bookings.

For example Uber's last quarter revenue was $3 billion on some $14 billion in bookings, with a loss of about $800 million.

[Gustomaximus]

My understanding;

$14 billion is revenue

$3 billion is their earnings after driver costs.

[jussij]

Why that $14 billion can not be called revenue is Uber specifically structures it's business to make sure their drivers form no part of the business, instead they insist all their drivers are independent contractors.

They do that specifically to reduce their running costs and hence maximize the profit on their actual revenue.

That would be like saying all iPhone App developers are working for Apple, when in fact all Apple does is take 30% of each and ever dollar these App developer earn in sales.

Likewise Uber just puts it's 30% Uber tax on every dollar it's drivers earn.

[ryan93]

Try 11 Billion in revenue

[dmode]

$50bn is total bookings, which is impressive. Revenue, I believe is $11bn runrate. But that doesn’t address cash flow depletion. I do believe they have runway though

[quickthrower2]

11bn revenue and runway used in the same sentence. The late 2010s are crazy times.

[maxerickson]

For the principles at Uber, it's all other people's money, so why not try to get as much more of it as possible.

For "investors", they are gambling that either the shares go up before they sell or that Uber builds a profitable business after they buy.

[alphast0rm]

From Uber's Q4 2018 report [1]:

  Gross cash: $6.4 billion in unrestricted cash ($4.8 billion at end of Q3 2018, $4.4 billon in Q4 2017)

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/uber-reports-3b-in-q4-reve...

[likeabbas]

You can take on debt to buyout another company

[dawhizkid]

I doubt Uber is taking a loan to buy them. Probably mostly shares of Uber with some % in cash.

[emilsedgh]

The article mentioned $1.4B in cash.

[mbesto]

Cash in this sense means they're not giving away equity of Uber's cap table as means to finance the acquisition. Where the cash comes from is a different story. As the parent comment suggested, this "cash" is likely levered with outside capital.

[bagacrap]

Some individual markets are supposedly profitable.