Posted on 12/04/2015 9:44:57 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Uber is reportedly shopping itself to investors for another round of funding, and this time it's seeking a valuation of $62.5 billion.
As this chart from Statista shows, that means Uber is now more valuable than the major U.S. car companies Ford and GM, more than media giants like Fox and Time-Warner Cable, and almost twice as much as eBay.
This is despite the fact that Uber almost certainly loses money, and has a fraction of these companies' revenue. Uber was expected to have net revenue of about $2 billion this year, compared with 2014 revenues of almost $18 billion for eBay, $23 billion for Time-Warner, and $136 billion for Ford.
But Uber is growing much faster than these companies, and that's what private investors value most.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Imagine that, and just SIX years ago, Uber did not exist!!
This should give new businesses hope that there is still a lot of money to be made from a totally new business model.
The key is to hold down expenses and start up costs.
Unlike eBay, Uber is courting business to use them, and considering how much Amazon is pushing the same day delivery (as well as Google and others), Uber does have a rather unique position in capturing quite a bit of that market...
More importantly, if you think of people as cargo, I think Uber is now one of the ten top delivery companies in the world. Swapping over their drivers from passenger to package delivery isn’t that hard of a swap.
That said, this is yet another tech company money pit. I’d save my money to buy the pieces when they go bust.
Two things Uber must fight ( if they can win, they’ll be YUGE ):
1) Taxi drivers and Taxi medallion owners. In big cities, the Taxi medallion value has DROPPED by 30 percent since Uber came into the picture.
There are anti-Uber street protests in Europe ( France especially )
2) City Government. Will they allow Uber to expand?
Even now, many are contemplating taxing Uber drivers for using city roads (some call it the “traffic tax” ).
Other than that, it’s a wonderful way for car owners to make money.
I know of a part-time college student who is paying is tuition bills as an Uber driver.
I also know someone who is a bored retiree who decided to be an Uber driver ( he sets his own hours ). This adds another $600 a week to his retirement income.
This business model is like eBay, a win-win situation for customers and ordinary car folks.
That’s a lot of money. They must be working enormous hours to bring that in.
I used Uber for the first time last month to get around in Miami, where I hate to drive myself.
ALL drivers complained about the low pay. That is, what Uber pays them for a trip. All the costs are on them, the driver. They are already talking about unionizing in some form to demand higher payments.
One specific driver who had recently lost his steady job told me that to even approach a living income for Miami, he had to Uber it for 12 hours a day for at least six days to make $400 - $500 in a week.
Most people who use Uber in my circle of friends and family in that city think that Uber will be keeping prices low until they run cabbies out of business, and then they will jack them up to whatever the market can bear. So, what’s the point? Uber represents an advantage in terms of cost right now but next year they will be as pricey as any other form of hired transportation.
Of course, I also predicted that facebook would never make any money and look what is happening there.
Why would they want to open themselves to a massive exposure of liability? Is there a state in the US which doesn’t have an active investigation into Uber and the contract relationship that they have with drivers and whether those are actually employees?
Besides, Amazon’s looking for automated systems as their future (see Amazon Delivery Drone video for an example of the system they’re developing.)
Uber’s value (and Lyft and other services) is that they’ve already got a massive list of drivers, already vetted, around the world. If a company didn’t want to utilize them as a contract delivery service and instead wanted to do it directly, I’d honestly expect them to simply buy one of the services.
Uber is great to make some extra money - for students, for someone with a 9-5 job, and for retirees.
It is not, IMHO, that great for someone looking to replace a full-time job. Uber says that its drivers make about $20/hour (pre-expenses). If you work 40 hours/week, that’s only $800 - and then you have to pay for gas, more oil changes, wear and tear, etc., plus your car depreciates with more miles. So no one is clearing $800/week in that situation.
FWIW, I don’t think that Uber bills itself as a full-time job replacement (though they wouldn’t mind if you wanted to do that). Heck, if one was unemployed, look for a job during the day and work for Uber at night and on weekends.
The secondary attraction is you know exactly where your ride is; no wondering when the cab will show up that you get with traditional service, you can see where that driver is. Plus fares are set before you get in; if the driver decides to go the long way around to deliver you as there's less traffic, you don't pay for that service.
Customer ratings of drivers means you know more about the person picking you up than you'll ever know about any standard cab driver. Plus it is much cheaper for the drivers - a typical cab from a traditional company rents for $600 - $800 a week, $1100 for a lot of the airport vans you see on the road. That's out of the driver's pocket. A lot of cab drivers I know have swapped over to doing Uber as working the same hours, they make more money.
RE: That’s a lot of money. They must be working enormous hours to bring that in.
If you are referring to the retiree I talked about, well, he works about 20 hours a week and makes about 20 to 30 dollars per hour in the outer borroaghs of New York City (depending on the shift he wants to take and how many hours he wants to drive ).
The $600 per week is average.
He never wants for passengers, not in this city of nearly 8 million people.
Plus, he has fun driving as he listens to Rush Limabugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and other conservative talk show hosts.
I thought there were some restrictions on Uber drivers in NYC - some special license or something. Do you know what I’m referring to? When I talk to NY cabbies, they often say their friends have tried Uber but then come back to driving a yellow cab. I hang out on Uber forums and read all the downsides about it, I’m afraid.
That's one reason why I think Amazon would want to steer clear of Uber, at least until the dust settles on all of the legal challenges.
Seeking a valuation of != actually being that valuable.
Because then they’d have to take on all that organizational effort.
RE: I thought there were some restrictions on Uber drivers in NYC
Mayor de Blasio, in deference to the Taxi lobby, wanted to RESTRICT that number of Uber drivers in NYC.
Didn’t work. He backed off eventually.
I’m not saying that Uber is for everyone, but many swear by it ( otherwise, how does it get valuated this highly?).
Look at this Hispanic guy’s article published in the New York Post for instance;
http://nypost.com/2015/10/07/driving-for-uber-lets-me-live-the-american-dream/
TITLE: Driving for Uber lets me live the American dream
By Samuel Nunez
I think there is room for everyone in the free market ( assuming government gets out of the way ). If Uber is to survive, it has to strike a balance between good service for customers and profitability for drivers.
If they can’t, well, the market punishes them. But we cannot know if government keep interfering in favor of one industry to help crush another.
After I wrote my original post (#6), I remembered that Amazon already has its own independent delivery drivers, at least in metro areas: https://flex.amazon.com/
To be honest, someone in my life drives Uber. He’s not making nearly this amount of money and he’s near both JFK and Newark Airport. He drives about 8 hours a day when he goes out. He likes his passengers, though, but that doesn’t bring home the beef.
(It’s not me, lol, but someone close to me!)
Uber is NOT for people who want to make an income to provide for his family.
It is great for folks like students and retirees who want to supplement their income or those who want to work instead of doing nothing at home receiving social security.
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