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Uber ‘running at a loss’

Leaked financial reports appear to indicate that car-share firm Uber is operating at a loss. According to internal financial documents obtained by the Gawker website (link http://gawker.com/here-are-the-internal-documents-that-prove-uber-is-a-mo-1704234157), Uber has lost tens of millions of dollars since 2012, and the documents suggest that CEO Travis Kalanick’s boasts about the company’s exponential revenue growth may be overblown. Gawker published images of the leaked documents online; an unaudited re
August 7, 2015 Read time: 2 mins
Leaked financial reports appear to indicate that car-share firm Uber is operating at a loss. According to internal financial documents obtained by the %$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 oLinkExternal Gawker website Visit gawker.com website false http://gawker.com/here-are-the-internal-documents-that-prove-uber-is-a-mo-1704234157 false false%>, Uber has lost tens of millions of dollars since 2012, and the documents suggest that CEO Travis Kalanick’s boasts about the company’s exponential revenue growth may be overblown.

Gawker published images of the leaked documents online; an unaudited revenue and expense breakdown for 2013 and 2014 showed that, though Uber’s net revenue has grown substantially, the company lost more than US$56 million in 2013. By the first half of 2014 alone, that had grown to more than US$160 million.

On a positive note, the documents also show that the company increased its cash holdings from US$263m in 2013 to over US$1bn the following year.

Uber is growing rapidly, despite many legal and public relations problems, bans in many countries, as well as competition from companies such as Lyft. In December 2014 it was reported to be worth US$40 billion.

In a statement to Business Insider, the company said, “Shock, horror, Uber makes a loss. This is hardly news and old news at that. It’s the case of business 101: you raise money, you invest money, you grow (hopefully), you make a profit and that generates a return for investors.”
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