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lhorie | 2 years ago

That's a somewhat outdated narrative to still be parroting.

Uber just got included into the SP 500. One of the pre-requisites for that is being profitable on a GAAP basis.

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BoiledCabbage|2 years ago

Which if I recall correctly they are only profitable due to a one time revenue boost right of something like hundreds of millions ?

And that one time "revenue" boost was that a company they own they are asserting is now valued more than last year. And they are calling that "revenue".

lhorie|2 years ago

No, it's operating profit.

itsoktocry|2 years ago

>One of the pre-requisites for that is being profitable on a GAAP basis.

Uber lost money for 22 straight quarters, then made money for the last two. Bit optimistic to think it's smooth sailing from here, in my opinion. I enjoy Uber, the product, but they are middle manning a couple of low margin industries. Hard to imagine it being a multi-hundred-billion dollar company.

troupo|2 years ago

> That's a somewhat outdated narrative to still be parroting.

It's not. Most of those "innovators" are still posting losses in the hundreds of millions

> Uber just got included into the SP 500. One of the pre-requisites for that is being profitable on a GAAP basis.

Because you can somehow lose a billion dollars a year for 10 years, become a publicly traded company with a steatement "we don't even know if we'll ever turn a profit", still continue operating at a huge loss for several years, write off 6 billion in losses, and finally become profitable enough to be included in S&P.

Any any other, sane world, Uber would be gone after two years of losing a billion dollars a year. Not crawl into S&P after 10 years of unsustainable losses.

sokoloff|2 years ago

I don’t have much dog in this fight, but it seems as if Uber’s losses were self-evidently sustainable.

ceejayoz|2 years ago

I mean, Enron was in the S&P 500, too.