UBER UPDATE [Friday, May 8th]

Do you realize it has been 1 year since Uber went public?

Seems crazy to me given all that has happened during that time

Here are UBER headlines for this first week of May 2020:

• “Ride-hailing giant Uber reported first-quarter results Thursday, including revenue of $3.54 billion and a net loss of $2.9 billion. This week, Uber laid off about 14% of its corporate employees, about 3,700 people, to cut costs. Uber was also sued, along with Lyft, by the state of California for allegedly misclassifying drivers as contractors, rather than employees to avoid paying for health benefits and other worker protections…” [FULL ARTICLE]
• “Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said drivers should earn health-care benefits commensurate with the hours they work. He said Uber is prepared to create a system to pay for those benefits, too. The suggestion comes as Uber and other gig economy businesses face mounting pressure to provide health-care and other protections for their workers, including in the form of a lawsuit from the California Attorney General and three city attorneys in the state…” [FULL ARTICLE]
• “Uber has pushed its target to achieve a measure of profitability to a quarter in 2021, reversing a decision made just three months ago to move up the goal to the end of this year. Uber will miss its target to reach an adjusted EBITDA quarterly profit in the fourth period of 2020, CFO Nelson Chai said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. The new target is a quarter in 2021. “Our goal remains the same, returning our growth to business and achieving profitability for all of our stakeholders, which we are now planning to achieve on an adjusted basis, on a quarterly basis, in 2021,” Chai said…” [FULL ARTICLE]
• “California sues Uber and Lyft to make drivers employees” [FULL ARTICLE]
• “I have admired Uber Technologies, first as a passenger and an Uber Eats customer, and now as a shareholder for clients of my investment management firm. Our investment case for Uber UBER, +5.69% includes an appreciation for its wide moat — natural barriers that deter competitors. At the core of Uber’s business lies a two-sided network — drivers and passengers (customers). These networks are incredibly difficult to create and thus extremely difficult to disrupt… [FULL ARTICLE]
• “Uber’s latest campaign is precisely the opposite of what one may surmise the company is all about. The ride-hailing behemoth, in a counterintuitive message, is asking people to stay home. Of course, these are not normal times, and the message of unity in sheltering, as opposed to moving around, illustrates a level of responsibility for a company that continues to work its way out from under a problematic history…” [FULL ARTICLE]
• “The coronavirus pandemic has gutted the so-called sharing economy. Its most valuable companies, which started the year by promising that they would soon become profitable, now say consumer demand has all but vanished. It is not likely to return anytime soon. In earnings reports this week, Uber and Lyft disclosed the depth of the financial damage. The companies said their ride-hailing businesses all but collapsed in March, the last month of the first quarter, as shelter-in-place orders spread through Europe and the United States…” [FULL ARTICLE]