Uber: Millwall über alles
After years of losses — a perky $32bn — bankrolled by its ever-generous funders, the ride-hailing giant has finally entered the uncharted waters of profitability. Riders and drivers alike basked in the halcyon days of subsidised rides and generous fees, but since Covid forced the company into an emergency restructuring that included laying off a quarter of its staff, the landscape has changed, with riders adjusting to higher costs and drivers to lower rates.
This has made a considerable impact on the bottom line, with the past four quarters generating more than $1bn in profit. The share price has doubled over the past year to a market capitalisation of about $118bn, satisfying conditions for it to become a member of the S&P 500 index. There is clearly a limit to what the market can bear in terms of pushing up prices, and the company is looking to broaden its revenue streams from just ride hailing and food delivery to become the complete travel app.
It now lets you book trains, coaches, car hire and holidays; instead of just getting you to the train station, Uber can handle every leg of your journey and sort you out at the other end too. In London the company has even announced an agreement with its arch-enemy, the black cab, enabling you to summon a Millwall supporter with firm views on immigration, in one of the most unlikely alliances since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. It’s an ambitious vision, and a sign that the business has reached a new level of maturity.
X Corp: X-rated rants
If those investors in the company formerly known as Twitter who haven’t already run for the hills were granted a Christmas wish list, smack at the top would be a request for Elon Musk to keep his trap shut. Musk has often oscillated on the spectrum between visionary genius and abject loon, but his performance at The New York Times DealBook summit may well go down as a Looney Tunes nadir.
Most executives faced with an exodus of advertisers might be expected to cosy up to them and bring them back into the fold, but Musk is not most executives. In a highly public forum in front of a group including Bob Iger, CEO of former advertiser Disney, Musk accused advertisers of blackmailing him and told them to “go fuck” themselves. This comes soon after Musk described an antisemitic post as “the actual truth”, prompting the White House to issue a statement describing the post as “an abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate”.
None of this can be music to the ears of Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO who was hired on the back of her lengthy connection with the advertising world. Those connections will need to be deep to survive the damage done every time Musk opens his mouth and inserts his size 12s.
In a brave display of glass half-fullishness, she sent a companywide e-mail the day after Musk’s F-bomb saying that Musk had shared an “unmatched and completely unvarnished perspective”. The subtext, presumably, was go back to playing with your rockets and let me do my job.
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