this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2024
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The city has just 39 licensed cab drivers.

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[–] nickhammes 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But it's a tactic, right? They could still make money, if a bit less, by operating in Minneapolis. But they can put pressure on residents to try and get it repealed by stopping, and try to send a message to other cities.

[–] iopq -3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

No, they barely make money as it is

Lyft is losing money, Uber is barely profitable

[–] nickhammes 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As a whole, yeah, but top-line losses don't mean each ride makes them less profitable. My understanding was their margins are slim enough they need a lot of rides to subsidize their fixed costs, so fewer rides means less profit, not less loss.

If Uber is actually profitable, stopping operations in Minneapolis really should make them less so. If this isn't them taking a small loss now because they believe they'll avoid a bigger loss later, I can't make sense of it.

[–] iopq -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes, they could make a very tiny profit from a decently sized city, but then it might encourage other cities to follow suit.

The costs are not all fixed, covering another city means paying more support agents, having people signing up local drivers, etc. so after this change it might not even be profitable after all

[–] nickhammes 4 points 8 months ago

That's my point though?

If costs like support agents that scale with rides make the rides unprofitable, their business model is upside down. Especially for Uber, I'm counting costs that scale with rides with costs per ride, vs infrastructure and truly fixed costs. Maybe they're so close to breaking even per ride that raising costs depresses demand enough to make them unprofitable, but it seems a lot more likely they're doing this to send a message first and foremost.

[–] rdyoung 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Uber is making way more money than they let on. They got caught stashing millions over seas. They and lyft both take over half of the transaction on average and have reduced their support teams to mostly bots and people who can barely read.

[–] iopq 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Millions? That's almost as much as they make in a day

[–] rdyoung 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tell us you don't understand gross revenue versus net profits without telling us.

[–] iopq -1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Uber increased the cash on hand by 139M in the 4th quarter, so they definitely make more than a million a day net profit