Making it Up on Volume

Uber lost 5 BILLION dollars in three months:

Uber set two dubious quarterly records on Thursday as it reported its results: its largest-ever loss, exceeding $5 billion, and its slowest-ever revenue growth.

The double whammy immediately renewed questions about the prospects for the company, the world’s biggest ride-hailing business. Uber has been dogged by concerns about sluggish sales and whether it can make money, worries that were compounded by a disappointing initial public offering in May.

For the second quarter, Uber said it lost $5.2 billion, the largest loss since it began disclosing limited financial data in 2017. A majority of that — about $3.9 billion — was caused by stock-based compensation that Uber paid its employees after its I.P.O.

Excluding that one-time expense, Uber lost $1.3 billion, or nearly twice the $878 million that it lost a year earlier. On that same basis and excluding other costs, the company said it expected to lose $3 billion to $3.2 billion this year.

Is it driving its competitors out of business? Nope. Does it have a huge fleet of self-driving cars ready to go? Nope. Has it found a way to deliver livery service that makes it cheaper rather than more expensive than traditional taxi hailing? Of course not.

If you want to keep the capital coming to a business model that very obviously has no chance of success, it helps if a lot of that venture capital is going as a very generous subsidy to affluent people using your service.