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Uber IPO: Relationship with drivers, drivers being employees, and some metrics starting to be revealed

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ippei
1202 Rider Driver Guru
 Posted 5 years, 5 months ago

The usual market gibberish, but I did find these interesting though:

Tips and Trips

Nonfinancial metrics are also important for understanding Uber’s business. The company will disclose monthly active platform consumers, or the number of consumers who use Uber for a ride or meal in a given month. Uber had 91 million such consumers in 2018, up from 68 million a year earlier.

Uber customers took 5.2 billion “trips” over the course of last year, though Uber has some nuances to how it counts trips. An UberPool carpool in which three customers share a ride but pay separately will qualify as three trips for the purpose of this metric. Uber Eats deliveries also count within trips. These caveats are one reason why Uber’s metrics won’t directly compare to those offered by Lyft Inc. LYFT, -1.93% which doesn’t have a food delivery business.

Though not crucial from an investment standpoint, tipping data were also included in the prospectus. Uber said that drivers earned $1.2 billion through the end of last year. The company introduced tipping in mid-2017.

Uber operates in 63 countries and disclosed that only 2% of those who live in these places have actually tried the company’s services.

Uber and its relationship with Uber

Uber doesn’t have a great relationship with its drivers as it stands, and the company assumes that dynamic is about to get worse. “We expect driver dissatisfaction will generally increase,” Uber said, as the company’s push to improve the bottom line leads to a reduction in some of the incentives provided to drivers. Uber will pay drivers to complete a certain number of trips in a given time period.

Uber…

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The usual market gibberish, but I did find these interesting though:

Tips and Trips

Nonfinancial metrics are also important for understanding Uber’s business. The company will disclose monthly active platform consumers, or the number of consumers who use Uber for a ride or meal in a given month. Uber had 91 million such consumers in 2018, up from 68 million a year earlier.

Uber customers took 5.2 billion “trips” over the course of last year, though Uber has some nuances to how it counts trips. An UberPool carpool in which three customers share a ride but pay separately will qualify as three trips for the purpose of this metric. Uber Eats deliveries also count within trips. These caveats are one reason why Uber’s metrics won’t directly compare to those offered by Lyft Inc. LYFT, -1.93% which doesn’t have a food delivery business.

Though not crucial from an investment standpoint, tipping data were also included in the prospectus. Uber said that drivers earned $1.2 billion through the end of last year. The company introduced tipping in mid-2017.

Uber operates in 63 countries and disclosed that only 2% of those who live in these places have actually tried the company’s services.

Uber and its relationship with Uber

Uber doesn’t have a great relationship with its drivers as it stands, and the company assumes that dynamic is about to get worse. “We expect driver dissatisfaction will generally increase,” Uber said, as the company’s push to improve the bottom line leads to a reduction in some of the incentives provided to drivers. Uber will pay drivers to complete a certain number of trips in a given time period.

Uber also admitted the obvious in its prospectus: If it were forced to classify its drivers as actual employees rather than contractors, that change would weigh on its financials. Employees are entitled to legal protections around wages and overtime. Companies don’t have to offer their contractors these benefits.

In general, Uber is on strange footing with its drivers: It needs them now but imagines a not-so-distant future when cars will be driving themselves to pick up passengers—most of the time.

Uber kindly makes sure to lay out that there could still be a diminished role for human drivers in an autonomous world: Autonomous cars may be good for driving along a “standard, well-mapped route in a predictable environment in good weather” but humans could remain a cog in the Uber machine during more complicated scenarios.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-ipo-5-things-you-need-to-know-about-potentially-the-biggest-ipo-in-years-2019-04-12 

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Comments

    {{ ratingSum }}
    DimSumUng
    130
     5 years ago

    "Uber doesn’t have a great relationship with its drivers as it stands"??  

    No sh*t.

    {{ ratingSum }}
    RedANT
    1072 Rider Driver
     5 years ago

    All just more pre IPO marketing hype.  The shit is getting deep the closer we get to the Uber IPO.  

    Lets face it... Uber is just looking for a way to allow startup investors to cash out on this money pit.  That's why they hired Dara to spin it, and why his $120 million bonus is riding on a $120 billion IPO.  It's all about transfer of liability while they walk away laughing with pockets full of cash.