[jqpabc123]

That's no Google but that's also no "barely makes any money" territory, no?

Yes.

Income and profit are not the same.

Uber spends all their income and then some --- which actually leaves them in "makes less than no money territory".

Imagine winning $100 at a casino. You tell your buddies about the big win but you conveniently neglect to mention the fact that you lost $200 first.

Your income was $100 but your expenses were $200 which leaves you with a net loss of $100.

[enslavedrobot]

Income is profit. Uber made $2.6 billion.

What you are talking about is revenue.Uber generated $11.2 billion in revenue.

Their profit margin was 23%. Up from 2.3% a year ago.

Business terminology is precise. Any founder that makes this mistake in front of an investor will lose their trust. Know the difference.

[__sy__]

eh... I'm pretty sure I mentioned net income (which i think is pretty close to profit in some circles) but if we care about debt servicing, buybacks...etc, let's just look at cash flow. And there too, in Q3, they posted $1B+ for quarter.

I'm not sure I understand the point of your analogy with respect to wining/losing at a casino. If I follow it, you are effectively saying something akin to, when Google first became profitable, its achievements should have been completely dismissed because of a decade of prior losses. That's not how tech companies work. Most of the value creation is 5-10-20 years out. You bear enormous losses with the knowledge that returns compound and eventually render irrelevant prior years' losses.