this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Uber’s net profit for the twelve months ending March 31st, 2023 was $-3.36bn. That’s negative 3.36 billion dollars. They posted their first ever operating profit today. August 1st, 2023.
So yeah, really cool company. Not at all some sort of horrifying demon of modern capitalism…
Pretty sure Uber’s sole existence is owed to cheap debt and a bubble in venture capital. Them and WeWork soaked investors for all they were worth and never gave a flying fig about profitability because there was always some one willing to float a cheap loan
They got investment because they were building a monopoly first. It really just tells you how valuable monopolies are if it wasn't obvious enough already. It's more reason why we can't let monopolies happen.
Like Amazon, which only had net losses for several years (from 1994 to 2002) in order to focus on aggressive growth and outcompeting other similar services by setting excessively low prices on books and media.
It was a sound business idea though. Just a shitty investment idea.
The owners/founders made shitloads off it (at the expense of investors.)
oh, yeah. the gig economy and the startups that exploit is genuinely awful. Can't say I feel bad for the duped investors, though. They invested in a genuinely shitty company. so. heh.
I really don't know how they are not profitable. They must waste a shit ton on self driving technology. They effectively killed a large portion of the taxi industry while now costing more. It's not as if their app is done miracle app these days. The few taxi services that are left tend to basically have a similar app.
That was the goal. Use unlimited VX money to kill taxis and then get a monopoly. Inflation came at the right time I guess, they can increase prices by a ton and we just blame it on inflation