Bill 'Latency Lord' Brennan
Fundamental Growth Investor, B2B/Sector Leaders & Picks-and-Shovels
Uber and DoorDash run commodity businesses that depend on governments able to spoil them, leaving much risk and little upside. Per @OnlyInBOS, Massachusetts now guarantees Uber and Lyft drivers at least $34.48 an hour plus benefits under a $175M settlement, and per @Investor_NICK_, Minneapolis's city council is proposing an emergency meeting to ban DoorDash drone delivery to protect drivers' income. x.com x.comÂ
Uber looks rather negative because driver reclassification, consumer cutbacks and easy switching threaten its business. Making drivers employees could raise costs and push ride prices up around 40%. Food delivery and comfort rides are cut when budgets tighten; riders switch to Lyft or Bolt for a few euros. Tesla or Waymo could bypass Uber with their own apps, and Google can scale quickly. Despite being a great company, Uber has too many unknowns; it is preferable to stay on the sidelines. x.comÂ
DoorDash may be seeking acquired growth because its market share looks to have peaked. Its interest in buying Instacart looks desperate given its poor platform, adding to the short-DoorDash side of the long-Uber pair. x.comÂ
Uber looks cheap, and insiders who know the company best are buying, a point @SteurJonas69716 raises. The stock is a solid buy as long as robotaxis do not kill the business, which is doubtful. x.com x.comÂ
Uber remains a stock to avoid because robotaxis threaten its take rate. That view could change if Uber adapts, pivots and proves it wrong. x.comÂ
Uber has big long-term secular problems, enough to make even CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's $10M token insider buy a moment to consider shorting, though actually shorting is not recommended. Beyond the Waymo and robotaxi threat, an AI agent that constantly checks every app for the best price would hurt Uber, consistently the highest-priced ride service. Uber would need to lower prices, and it lacks the tech stack. x.com x.comÂ
Uber's potential Instacart acquisition could create valuable marketplace and route-density synergies. Scaled marketplace assets are rare; buying one would also keep competitors from consolidating grocery delivery, a sticky category with large average orders. Growth alone is not the measure of the deal, and tech buybacks are overrated. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Tesla's Cybercab launch makes owning Uber scary right now. x.comÂ
Uber's demand-side scale could let it aggregate fragmented or commoditized autonomous vehicle supply, though judging by the stock price nobody believes this. @WaterworldCapi1 argues autonomy at scale removes the need for its driver network and invites many competitors. But scaling rivals may not be cheap, Uber need not build its own fleets, and the shift will take decades, giving a hybrid network time. The stock becomes interesting only if the price gets low enough. x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Uber's large, successful network and marketplace give it a moat. The stock is in stage 4, but its fundamentals still appeal. x.comÂ
Uber is a terrible product that most people hate and can't wait to replace. That sets it apart from Adobe, whose software people don't hate, even if they dislike the pricing. x.comÂ
