Coronavirus Clobbers Uber, Leading to $1.8 Billion Quarterly Loss
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Coronavirus clobbers Uber, leading to $1.8 billion quarterly loss:
The coronavirus pandemic hammered Uber's finances in the second quarter of 2020, the company announced on Thursday. Gross bookings for Uber's core ride-hailing business plunged by 75 percent compared with a year earlier-from $12.2 billion to $3 billion.
That was offset somewhat by rapid growth in Uber's delivery business. Delivery bookings more than doubled from $3.4 billion to $7 billion.
The company lost $1.8 billion in the second quarter on a GAAP basis. Ignoring one-time charges, Uber has been losing around $1 billion per quarter for the last couple of years.
[...] In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people in an effort to contain mounting losses.
Demand for rides cratered, while demand for deliveries soared. In his Thursday statement, Khosrowshahi argued that Uber's product portfolio had a "natural hedge" since people ordered more takeout even as they cut back on going out.
Still, Uber says that its rides business earned a $50 million profit on an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) basis. The problem is that this figure is nowhere close to offsetting losses and overhead elsewhere-including the delivery business and Uber's expensive self-driving project.
Fortunately, Uber is in no danger of running out of money; it has almost $8 billion in cash and short-term investments. It could easily burn cash at this rate for another year.
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