[Zanfa]

I'll admit, I should've checked their Q3 numbers before, regarding the write-off, but they're nowhere near profitability even if you ignore that.

For example, in the table linked above, they've accounted for all revenues, but not attributed all of their expenses by segment. According to their filing their total loss from operations across all segments was $572M, however if you add up all their segments in the table, they come out to a $8M profit. That's what bothers me. If a company has 3 segments that generate 100% of its revenue, how can it claim that $600M in operating expenses shouldn't be attributed to any of those segments, thus making one of those segments profitable.

I think everybody in the industry segment uses the same sketchy metrics because they are also terribly unprofitable.

[lhorie]

Yeah, that's actually a pretty good point. Personally, I don't really pay that much attention to profitability of individual verticals because I hold similar opinions on cost attribution, but then again, I'm no accounting expert, so I don't know if my opinions are actually correct.

I think the narrative people are pushing about bleeding money on every ride is too simplistic though. I could definitely get behind an argument that, for example, driver incentives ought to be bucketed under mobility, but on the other hand, attributing a Didi valuation fluctuation to a business vertical is obviously silly. Personally, I'm not convinced that there are enough "hidden" losses in misc categories that are "rightfully" attributable to mobility to offset the Q3 performance, and my understanding is that many analysts are bullish on Uber right now because they see the trend in these metrics, adjusted as the metrics may be. I guess we'll see what happens next year.