Blomberg: A shrinking emopire

    

A shrinking empire  
  Bloomberg 14 July 2017 at 11:02

Fully Charged
From Bloomberg


FOLLOW US Facebook Share Twitter Share    SUBSCRIBE Subscribe


Hi all, it’s Eric. Is Uber a global ride-hailing operation or a service for the developed world with some investments in emerging markets tacked on? It’s starting to look more like the latter.

The story was that Uber’s technological advantages were supposed to overpower its competitors. Thousands of software engineers in San Francisco were supposedly building Uber Technologies Inc. a deep “moat”—a competitive advantage that would be the undoing of local competitors. Mix in some buzzy but irrelevant truths about social networks (something, something, network effects something, something, winner-take-all businesses) and you’ve got a compelling pitch.

That hasn’t happened. Instead, local competitors have done just fine. Well, they’ve collectively lost billions, but so has Uber. Local competitors have done fine, relatively.

Didi Chuxing beat Uber. The Chinese ride-hailing company gave away 20 percent of its company in order to get the American nuisance to leave town. Uber ultimately had to acknowledge that it had been bested.

Now, a year after walking away from the world’s most populous country, Uber is leaving the world’s biggest country by landmass. That would be Russia. Uber is taking a 37 percent stake in a new company controlled by local search giant Yandex NV. Uber will again walk away with plenty of upside, while stoppering its losses in a faraway corner of the world.

It seems like a good deal for Uber, which gets more than a third of the unnamed company even though Yandex.Taxi’s bookings were nearly double Uber’s in the region. Uber forked over a one-time payment of $225 million, but it still has cash to spare and gets to reduce its losses for the long term.

It’s impossible to talk about corporate investments like this without mentioning Yahoo!’s prescient deal for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. This could very well be like that. But ultimately, Yahoo’s investment in another company became more valuable than the company itself, so there’s that.

Uber’s business development team, formerly led by Emil Michael, almost did too well. Fresh off raising hundreds of millions from Alphabet Inc.’s venture arm and TPG, Travis Kalanick told Michael—back when they both had jobs—that Uber would never need to raise money again, according to The Upstarts, a book by Bloomberg’s Brad Stone. Of course, he was way wrong. Uber has since raised more than $15 billion and spent much of that on expansion, especially in China, where it dropped at least $2 billion.

Then, after losing billions abroad without the resounding wins they anticipated, Michael’s team came to the rescue, cutting deals with Didi and Yandex. Uber’s global successes seem to be more defined by deal-making than operational victories. It’s starting to look more like investment firm SoftBank Group Corp. than UPS.

Of course, Uber will still operates in 72 countries after the Yandex deal. London and Paris are two of the company’s most profitable markets. Business in Latin America is growing fast. And Uber wouldn’t have had the leverage to negotiate deals with Didi and Yandex unless it had credible businesses in each country.

India and Southeast Asia remain open questions, but a deal with Ola or Grab seems possible. Investors are talking about it. Uber could just as easily buy one of its competitors instead of taking a stake. With two spinoffs under its belt, Uber might be sensitive about yielding too much of its operational footprint. At the same time, many investors and employees are ready for the company to shift to profitability.

These deals are helping Uber cut its losses, but how big will its empire be if this strategy continues? —Eric Newcomer


And here's what you need to know in global technology news

Facebook is working on a $200 wireless Oculus VR for 2018. Unlike the rest of the market, the new headset won't need to be plugged in to a computer or a video console. It won't, however, know when you're moving around.


The DraftKings, FanDuel marriage is not meant to be. Facing pressure from U.S. regulators, the duo called its attempted merger quits.


The ICO bubble was bigger than early-stage funding. While young startups raise about $360 million a month, initial coin offerings brought in $560 millionbrought in $560 million in June.



Sponsor Content by Hewlett Packard Enterprise

There’s a revolution happening in the way we live and work, and we want to help businesses like yours thrive. That’s why Hewlett Packard Enterprise is working every day to help businesses transform from what’s now to what’s next. Where your legacy IT may once have forced you to say No, Hybrid IT from HPE can help you say Yes to bigger and better opportunities.