Uber即将崩溃 [美国媒体]

Uber Is Headed for a Crash

Uber即将崩溃

By Yves Smith

作者 伊夫 • 史密斯



By steamrolling local taxi operations in cities all over the world and cultivating cheerleaders in the business press and among Silicon Valley libertarians, Uber has managed to create an image of inevitability and invincibility. But the company just posted another quarter of jaw-dropping losses — this time over $1 billion, after $4.5 billion of losses in 2017. How much is hype and how much is real?

通过压倒世界各大城市的本地出租车业务，在商业媒体和硅谷自由主义者中培植鼓吹者，Uber成功地创造了一种必然趋势和不可战胜的形象。 但该公司刚刚公布了又一个令人瞠目结舌的季度亏损—这一次亏损超过10亿美元，而2017年亏损了45亿美元。 多少（业绩）是炒作，多少（业绩）是真的？

The notion that Uber, the most highly valued private company in the world, is a textbook “bezzle” — John Kenneth Galbraith’s coinage for an investment swindle where the losses have yet to be recognized — is likely to come as a surprise to its many satisfied customers. But as we’ll explain, relying on the extensive work of transportation expert Hubert Horan, Uber’s investors have been buying your satisfaction in the form of massive subsidies of services. What has made Uber a good deal for users makes it a lousy investment proposition. Uber has kept that recognition at bay via minimal and inconsistent financial disclosures combined with a relentless and so far effective public-relations campaign depicting Uber as following the pattern of digitally based start-ups whose large initial losses transformed into strong profits in a few years.

Uber作为世界上估值最高的私营企业，其教科书式的"侵占资产收益"理念可能会令其众多满意的顾客感到惊讶，约翰•肯尼思•加尔布雷斯提出的"侵占资产收益"概念是指投资欺诈中骗局的损失尚没有被发现。（译者援引FT中文网注解：“侵占资产收益(bezzle)”，是指从侵占资产到日后被发现期间，积累形成的资产规模。这类收益可能相当可观，直到市场下跌使得侵占行为被曝光。约翰•肯尼思•加尔布雷斯(John Kenneth Galbraith)在《大崩溃》(The Great Crash)一书中写道：“审计手段正变得更加敏锐而一丝不苟。商业道德已经显着改善。侵占资产收益缩水。”） 但是正如我们将要解释的，依靠运输专家 Hubert Horan 的大量工作，Uber 的投资者正在通过大量服务补贴的形式购买你的满意度。 正是这些对用户有利的交易让Uber成为一个糟糕的投资建议。 Uber通过极少且不一致的财务披露，加上持续不断但迄今为止行之有效的公关活动，让这种（对被侵占资产的）发现陷入了困境。这些公关活动将Uber描绘成一种互联网初创企业模式，将会在短短几年内从最初的巨额亏损转变为强劲的利润。

Comparisons of Uber to other storied tech wunderkinder show Uber is not on the same trajectory. No ultimately successful major technology company has been as deeply unprofitable for anywhere remotely as long as Uber has been. After nine years, Uber isn’t within hailing distance of making money and continues to bleed more red ink than any start-up in history. By contrast, Facebook and Amazon were solidly cash-flow positive by their fifth year.

然而将 Uber 与其他传奇科技明星进行比较，表明 Uber 并不在同一条轨迹上。 没有哪家最终成功的大型科技公司会像 Uber 一样，在任何地方都长期无法实现盈利。 九年过去了，Uber仍然距离赚钱遥遥无期，它继续流淌着比历史上任何一家初创企业都要多的赤字。 相比之下，Facebook 和亚马逊第五年的现金流就已经稳定为正。

The fact that this glorified local transportation company continues to be a financial failure should come as no surprise. What should be surprising is that the business press still parrots the fond hope of Uber’s management that the company will go public in 2019 at a target valuation of $120 billion. That’s well above its highest private share sale, at a valuation of $68 billion. And Uber’s management and underwriters will no doubt hope that the great unwashed public looks past the fact that more recently, SoftBank bought out insiders at a valuation of $48 billion, and its offer was oversubscribed. Why should new money come in at a price more than double where executives and employees were eager to get out?

事实上，这个荣耀加身的本地运输公司持续财务失败不令人惊讶。 应该令人惊讶的是，商业媒体依然喋喋不休重复着Uber管理层的美好愿景: 该公司将于2019年上市，目标估值为1200亿美元。 这远高于其估值680亿美元的最高私募股权出售额。 Uber的管理层和承销商无疑希望大众能够忽略这样一个事实: 最近，软银以480亿美元的估值收购内部股份，其出价被超额交易。 为什么新资金进入的报价是高管和员工渴望套现退出的两倍多？（译者注：高管和员工渴望抛售股份套现，心理价位甚至不到软银报价的一半）

Uber has never presented a case as to why it will ever be profitable, let alone earn an adequate return on capital. Investors are pinning their hopes on a successful IPO, which means finding greater fools in sufficient numbers.
Uber is a taxi company with an app attached. It bears almost no resemblance to internet superstars it claims to emulate. The app is not technically daunting and and does not create a competitive barrier, as witnessed by the fact that many other players have copied it. Apps have been introduced for airlines, pizza delivery, and hundreds of other consumer services but have never generated market-share gains, much less tens of billions in corporate value. They do not create network effects. Unlike Facebook or eBay, having more Uber users does not improve the service.

Uber从来没有说清楚它会持久盈利的商业模式，更不用说获得足够的资本回报了。 投资者把希望寄托在成功的 IPO 上，这就意味着要在足够高的价位上发现更大的傻瓜。Uber 只是一家附有应用程序的出租车公司。 它几乎与自己声称模仿的互联网巨星毫无相似之处。 这个应用程序在技术上并不令人生畏，也不会造成竞争壁垒，这一点可以从许多其他玩家复制它的事实中看出来。 应用程序已经为航空公司、披萨外卖和数百种其他消费者服务推出，但从未带来市场份额的增长，更不用说数百亿美元的企业价值了。 它们不会产生网络效应。 与 Facebook 和 eBay 不同的是，有更多的 Uber 用户并不能改善服务。

Nor, after a certain point, does adding more drivers. Uber does regularly claim that its app creates economies of scale for drivers — but for that to be the case, adding more drivers would have to benefit drivers. It doesn’t. More drivers means more competition for available jobs, which means less utilization per driver. There is a trade-off between capacity and utilization in a transportation system, which you do not see in digital networks. The classic use of “network effects” referred to the design of an integrated transport network — an airline hub and spoke network which create utility for passengers (or packages) by having more opportunities to connect to more destinations versus linear point-to-point routes. Uber is obviously not a fixed network with integrated routes — taxi passengers do not connect between different vehicles.

到达一定程度之后，也不会增加更多的驾驶员。 Uber经常声称，它的应用程序为司机创造了规模经济，但要做到这一点，就必须让更多司机受益。 事实并非如此。 更多的司机意味着更多的就业竞争，这意味着每个司机的利用率更低。 在运输系统中有一个容量和利用率之间的平衡，这在数字网络中是看不到的。 "网络效应"的经典用法指的是综合运输网络的设计ー航空公司的枢纽和辐射网络，相对于线性点对点航线而言，它通过增加连接到更多目的地的机会来为乘客(或包裹)创造效益。 Uber显然不是一个拥有综合路线的固定网络—出租车乘客不会在不同车辆之间进行连接。

Nor does being bigger make Uber a better business. As Hubert Horan explained in his series on Naked Capitalism, Uber has no competitive advantage compared to traditional taxi operators. Unlike digital businesses, the cab industry does not have significant scale economies; that’s why there have never been city-level cab monopolies, consolidation plays, or even significant regional operators. Size does not improve the economics of delivery of the taxi service, 85 percent of which are driver, vehicle, and fuel costs; the remaining 15 percent is typically overheads and profit. And Uber’s own results are proof. Uber has kept bulking up, yet it has failed to show the rapid margin improvements you’d see if costs fell as operations grew.

规模变大也不会让Uber成为一个更好的企业。 正如 Hubert Horan 在他的裸资本主义系列中解释的那样，与传统出租车运营商相比，Uber没有竞争优势。 与互联网行业不同，出租车行业没有明显的规模经济，这就是为什么从来没有出现过城市层面的出租车垄断、整合游戏，甚至重要的地区运营商。 规模并不能提高出租车服务的经济效益，其中85% 是司机、车辆和燃料成本，剩下的15% 是典型的间接费用和利润。 Uber自己的结果就是证明。 Uber一直在不断壮大，如果随着运营规模的扩大成本会下降的话，应该能看到利润率快速提高，但它并没有。

Size also reduces flexibility. As professor Amar Bhide, author of the classic The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses, stated:
大小也降低了灵活性。 正如经典着作《新企业的起源和演变》(The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses)的作者阿马尔•拜德(Amar Bhide)教授所言:

Many giga-businesses have no clue, when they start, about how they will become behemoths — think Microsoft developing Basic for the Altair in 1975, Sam Walton starting a country store, and Hewlett and Packard selling audio-oscillators. But being small, they can experiment to figure out what is profitably scaleable and make radical changes if necessary. Which is why not having deep pockets to start with is a blessing not a curse. Sure there are some fledgling companies, like Google and Amazon that happen to start in the right direction and being darlings of venture capitalists or Wall Street propels them ahead faster. But these are the exceptions. Otherwise money just bloats them and makes them hard to change direction.

许多独角兽企业（十亿美元级别）从一开始并不知道自己将如何成为庞然大物——想想微软(Microsoft)1975年为 Altair 开发的 Basic 语言，山姆•沃尔顿(Sam Walton)开设的乡村商店，以及惠普(Hewlett and Packard)销售音频振荡器。 但由于规模较小，他们可以通过实验找出可扩展的利润，并在必要时做出根本性的改变。 这就是为什么一开始没有雄厚的财力是一件幸事，而不是一件祸事。 当然，也有一些羽翼未丰的公司，比如谷歌和亚马逊，它们刚好在开始就朝着正确的方向发展，而风险投资家或华尔街的宠爱让它们前进得更快。 但这些都是特例。 反之，金钱只会让他们膨胀，让他们难以改变方向。

But, but, but — you may say — Uber has established a large business in cities over the world. Yes, it’s easy to get a lot of traffic by selling at a discount. Uber is subsidizing ride costs. Across all its businesses, Uber was providing services at only roughly 74 percent of their cost in its last quarter. Uber was selling its services at only roughly 64 percent of their cost in 2017, with a GAAP profit margin of negative 57 percent. As a reference point, in its worst four quarters, Amazon lost $1.4 billion on $2.8 billion in sales, for a negative margin of 50 percent. Amazon reacted by firing over 15 percent of its workers.

但是，但是，但是---- 你可能会说---- Uber已经在世界各地的城市建立了一个大型企业。 是的，以折扣价销售很容易获得大量流量。 Uber正在补贴乘车费用。 在所有业务中，Uber上一季度提供的服务只能收回约74%的成本 。 2017年，Uber以成本大约64% 的价格出售服务，GAAP （一般公认会计原则）利润率为负57% 。 而作为一个参照点，在亚马逊最糟糕的四个季度，损耗14亿美元，销售额为28亿美元，利润率为负50% ， 作为应对，亚马逊解雇了超过15% 的员工。

Uber defenders might argue that that’s a big improvement from 2015, when revenues only covered 43 percent of costs, and the GAAP margin was negative 132 percent. But as we’ll discuss in more detail, this reduction in how much Uber spends to get each average dollar of revenue didn’t come from improved efficiency, but was due to almost entirely to cutting driver pay. The transportation company appears to have hit the limit of how much it can squeeze drivers, since churn has increased.

支持Uber的人可能会说，这比2015年有了很大的进步，2015年的收入只覆盖了成本的43% ，而 GAAP 的利润率为负132% 。 但是，正如我们将要详细讨论的，Uber每一美元收入平均花费的减少并不是来自于效率的提高，而是几乎完全来自于司机薪酬的削减。 随着司机流失的增加，运输公司似乎已经将司机压榨到了极限。

Uber has raised an unprecedented $20 billion in investor funding — 2,600 times more than Amazon’s pre-IPO funding. This has allowed Uber to undercut traditional local cab companies, whose fares have to cover all costs, as well as have more cars chasing rides than unsubsidized operators can. Recall that for any transportation service, there is a trade-off between frequency of service and utilization. Having Uber induce more drivers to be on the road to create fast pickups means drivers on average will get fewer fares.

Uber筹集了史无前例的200亿美元投资资金，是亚马逊 ipo 前的2600倍。 这使得Uber能够打压传统的本地出租车公司，后者的车费必须包含所有成本（所以很难降价和Uber竞争），同时Uber也比没有补贴的运营商拥有更多的车来追逐车次。 回想一下，对于任何运输服务，在服务频率和利用率之间都存在一个平衡。 让Uber促使更多的司机在路上开快车意味着平均来说司机将得到更少的回报。

If Uber were to drive all competitors out of business in a local market and then jack up prices, customers would cut back on use. But more important, since barriers to entry in the taxi business are low, and Uber lowered them further by breaking local regulations, new players would come in under Uber’s new price umbrella. So Uber would have to drop its prices to meet those of these entrants or lose business.

如果Uber在当地市场将所有竞争对手挤出市场，然后抬高价格，消费者就会减少使用。 但更重要的是，由于进入出租车行业的门槛很低，而且通过打破当地法规，Uber进一步降低了门槛，新的竞争者将会加入进来以低于Uber抬高后的价格运营。 因此，Uber将不得不降低价格，以应对这些新进入者的竞争，否则将失去业务。

Moreover, Uber is a high-cost provider. A fleet manager at a medium-scale Yellow Cab company can buy, maintain, and insure vehicles more efficiently than individual Uber drivers. In addition, transportation companies maintain tight central control of both total available capacity (vehicles and labor) and how that capacity is scheduled. Uber takes the polar opposite approach. It has no assets, and while it can offer incentives, it cannot control or schedule capacity.

此外，Uber是一个高成本的供应商。 一个中等规模的Yellow Cab出租车公司的车队经理可以比单个的Uber司机更有效地购买、维护车辆以及上保险。 此外，运输公司对总可用能力(车辆和人力)以及这些能力的安排保持着严格的中央控制，但Uber采取了截然相反的方式， 它没有资产，虽然它可以提供激励，但它不能控制或安排能力。

The only advantage Uber might have achieved is taking advantage of its drivers’ lack of financial acumen — that they don’t understand the full cost of using their cars and thus are giving Uber a bargain. There’s some evidence to support that notion. Ridester recently published the results of the first studyto use actual Uber driver earnings, validated by screenshots. Using conservative estimates for vehicle costs, they found that that UberX drivers, which represent the bulk of its workforce, earn less than $10 an hour. They would do better at McDonald’s. But even this offset to the generally higher costs of fleet operation hasn’t had an meaningful impact on Uber’s economics.

Uber唯一的优势可能是利用司机缺乏财务敏锐性的缺点ーー他们不了解使用自己的车的全部成本，因此给了Uber一个讨价还价的机会。 有一些证据支持这一观点，Ridester 最近公布了第一个使用实际Uber司机收入的研究结果，通过截图进行验证，使用保守估计的车辆成本，他们发现 UberX （Uber使用特定车型的服务）的司机，代表了大部分的Uber司机，收入少于每小时10美元。 他们在麦当劳会过得更好。 但是，即使这样（降低司机收入）抵消了普遍较高的（相对于传统出租车公司）车队运营成本，也没能对Uber的经济产生有意义的影响。

But, you may argue, Uber has all that data about rides! Certainly that allows it to be more efficient than traditional cabs. Um, no. Local ride services have backhaul problems that no amount of cleverness can remedy, like taking customers to the airport and either waiting hours for a return fare or coming back empty, or daily urban commutes, where workers go overwhelmingly in one direction in the morning rush and the other way in the evening. Similarly, Uber’s surge pricing hasn’t led customers to change their habits and shift their trips to lower-cost times, which could have led to more efficient utilization. If Uber had any secret sauce, it would have already shown up in Uber revenues and average driver earnings. Nine years in, and there’s no evidence of that.

但是，你可能会说，Uber 有所有关于乘车的数据！ 这当然使得它比传统出租车更有效率， 然而没有。 本地的出租车服务有回程的问题，无论如何聪明都无法弥补，比如送客人去机场只能花数个小时等回程客或空车返回，或以城市日常通勤来说，工人在早高峰往一个方向走，晚上往另一个方向走。 类似情况中，Uber的动态定价没能带来更高的利用率，消费者没有改变他们的消费习惯，也不会调整到低费率时段出行。 如果Uber有什么秘密武器的话，它应该早就体现在Uber的收入和司机的平均收入上了，然而九年过去了，还没有证据表明这一点。

Uber also has much higher overhead costs: vastly better-paid employees, in prime office space, engaged in activities that a local cab company either rarely or never has to handle, like driver recruitment (Uber has recruitment centers), public relations and advertising, litigation, airfare, and other costs of running a global operation.

Uber还有高得多的日常开支: 高得多的薪水，上好的办公空间，雇员从事本地出租车公司很少或从来没有处理过的活动，比如司机招聘(Uber设有招聘中心)、公共关系和广告、诉讼、机票，以及运营全球业务的其他成本。

And Uber ought to have a higher cost of capital than a mature business that has (or at least had) pretty stable revenues and operations.

Uber当然会比那些收入和运营都相当稳定（至少以前是）的成熟（出租车）企业有更高的资本成本。

Uber has gone to some length to avoid publishing financial information on a consistent basis over time, a big red flag. One telling example: In late 2016, Uber targeted a share offering to high-end retail investors, which were presumably even dumber money than the Saudis that had invested in its previous round. Nevertheless, both JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank turned down the “opportunity” to market Uber shares to their clients, even though this could jeopardize their position in a future Uber IPO. Why? The “ride sharing” company supplied 290 pages of verbiage, but not its net income or even annual revenues.

久而久之，Uber已经到了会避免发布一致的财务信息的程度，这是一个巨大的危险信号。 一个有说服力的例子是: 2016年末，Uber将目标对准高端散户投资者发行股票，据推测，这些投资者的资金规模比上一轮沙特阿拉伯投资者的规模更大，然而，JP 摩根和德意志银行都拒绝了向客户推销Uber股票的"机会"，尽管这可能危及他们在未来Uber IPO 中的地位。 为什么？ 这家"拼车"公司提供了长达290页厚厚的资料，却没有提到其净收入甚至年收入。

In keeping, while Uber presented a full profit-and-loss statement for the first and second quarters of 2018, it gave only three line-items for the last quarter, when its margins worsened.

与此同时，Uber在2018年第一季度和第二季度提交了一份完整的亏损利润表，但在上一季度利润率恶化时，它只提交了个三行的（表格）。

While Uber has reduced its negative gross margin over time, those improvements have come mainly from squeezing driver compensation, so that they now net less per hour on average than taxi operators.
Through 2015, 80 percent of fares went to drivers. In its early years, Uber gave drivers high payouts to attract good drivers and also offered drivers incentives to buy cars. Uber cut that to as low as 68 percent, then partially reversed it as driver turnover became acute to its current, roughly 70 percent level. In 2017, Uber’s margin as reported using GAAP was a negative 57 percent. It would have stayed at the negative triple-digit level absent the driver pay-throttling.

尽管随着时间的推移，Uber已经减少了负的毛利率，但这些改善主要来自于压榨司机薪酬，因此现在他们的平均时薪低于出租车运营商。在2015年，80% 的车费流向了司机。 早年，Uber为司机提供高额奖金，以吸引优秀司机，并为司机提供奖励去购买汽车。 后来Uber将这一比例降低到了68% ，然后在司机流失率严重时部分扭转了这一比例为现在的70% 左右。 2017年，据报道使用 GAAP 的Uber利润率为负57% 。 如果没有紧抠司机的费用来节流，它将停留在负三位数的水平。

The pay cuts have led to more driver turnover, which leads to higher managerial costs. And it is degrading service quality. A comment on an article about Uber’s third-quarter earnings:

减薪导致了更多的司机流失，从而导致了更高的管理成本。 而且这还降低了服务质量。 一篇关于Uber第三季度收入的文章的评论:

I needed a ride from Burbank to LAX on a Thursday morning around 5:45 AM. I requested a car the night before. At pickup time there wasn’t a Lyft or Uber within 20 miles. When I did get one the driver said that at the rate they are being paid it wasn’t worth getting out of bed early anymore.

周四早上5:45左右，我从伯班克搭车去洛杉矶国际机场。 前一天晚上我要了一辆车。 在接送的时候，方圆20英里内没有 Lyft 或者 Uber 司机。 直到后来才碰到一个，司机说按照现在他们的收费标准，再也不值得早早起床了。

Uber’s other way of making its margins less terrible has been ditching its worst operations. But even then, Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi effectively admitted that Uber isn’t profitable in any market when you factor in corporate overheads. Uber has been frantically adding new business like Uber Eats and scooter rentals to keep its growth story alive. Uber not only tacitly admits that they aren’t covering their costs, it refuses to give any detail about these operations beyond their revenues and does not discuss what it would take for them to turn the corner.

Uber的另一种使利润不那么糟糕的方法是剔除其最差的业务。 但即便如此，Uber新任首席执行官 Dara Khosrowshahi 事实上承认，如果考虑到公司的管理费用，Uber在任何市场都无利可图。 Uber一直在疯狂地增加新的业务，如Uber餐饮和摩托车租赁，以保持其增长故事的活力。 Uber不仅默认他们没能收回成本，而且拒绝透露他们收入之外的任何细节，也不讨论他们需要什么才能度过难关。

But what about driverless cars? Let’s put aside that some enthusiasts like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak now believe that fully autonomous cars are “not going to happen.” Fully autonomous cars would mean Uber would have to own the cars. The capital costs would be staggering and would burst the illusion that Uber is a technology company rather that a taxi company that buys and operates someone else’s robot cars.

但是无人驾驶汽车呢？ 让我们抛开一些像苹果联合创始人史蒂夫 • 沃兹尼亚克这样现在相信无人驾驶汽车"不会发生"的狂热分子，无人驾驶汽车意味着 Uber 将不得不拥有自己的汽车，资金成本将是惊人的，并将打破 Uber 是一家科技公司的幻想，它（现出原形）只会是一家购买和经营别人机器人汽车的出租车公司。

Uber has succeeded in getting the business press to treat its popularity as the same as commercial success. A few tech reporters, like Eric Newcomer of Bloomberg, have politely pointed out that Uber’s results fall well short of other tech illuminati prior to going public. The pitch that dominance would produce profits is demonstrably false and Uber seems unable to come up with a new story. There’s every reason to think that investors, not local cab companies, will wind up being Uber’s biggest roadkill.

Uber成功地让商业媒体将其受欢迎程度视作商业成功。 但一些科技记者，比如彭博社的 Eric Newcomer，已经礼貌地指出 Uber 的业绩远远低于其他科技公司在上市前的业绩。 所谓的主导地位会带来利润的说法显然是错误的，而Uber似乎也无法编出一个新的故事。 有充分的理由相信，投资者，而不是本地的出租车公司，最终会成为Uber最大的倒毙路边的牺牲品。