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> Uber is fortunate if they come away from Russia with anything "Uber will invest $225 million and take a 36.6 percent stake ... Yandex will invest $100 millio

> Uber is fortunate if they come away from Russia with anything "Uber will invest $225 million and take a 36.6 percent stake ... Yandex will invest $100 million and own 59.3 percent" If they are paying twice as much as their partner for a minority stake I am pretty sure they will not be coming away with anything.

kgwgk 9y ago
The whole thing "will be valued at $3.73 billion", so it's perfectly possible that the total contribution of Yandex (cash and non-cash) is much larger than the contribution of Uber.
oscii 9y ago
From the article: > In Russia, Yandex.Taxi has gross bookings of $1.01 billion on an annualized basis, while Uber had $566 million, according to a presentation prepared for investors. Two companies will be merged (in Russia), but the brands will stay. The investment-stake asymmetry is probably due to the difference in the gross bookings.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
skinnymuch 9y ago
The overall company is worth $3B though, right? Seems like a good deal for Uber since they do half the revenue of Yandex. Uber was never going to be allowed to win Russia and they can lower the money they were pouring into Russia, sans this one time $225M. Probably save more from however much they were hemorraging. Just like with the Chinese merger, I think this is a good thing. Gets Uber to stop burning so much money.
techinformed56 9y ago
If you read other articles you can see that Uber spent 170M in Russia till now. Along with this 225M its a total 395M of spending. And now they got 36.6% stake in a company (now a leader in Russia) worth 3.4B. So Uber got 1.4B. How is that not coming out with anything? Uber did same thing in China. While we all think they lost in China, Uber seems to have spent around 2B or so but got away with close to 8B stake in Didi (leader in China). Any investor will be happy with those returns.
- calafrax 9y ago
  They own a minority stake in an entity that has to pay Yandex for infrastructure, licensing rights and advertising which Yandex controls. So this entity racks up a lot of debt (to Yandex) while making transfer payments to Yandex and then in a few years: "whoops, bankrupt!" Now the equity holders (Uber) get wiped out and the company re-organizes and sells its assets (to Yandex) to pay off its debts (to Yandex) and Uber gets nothing. Oh, NO! That's not legal! That's not fair! Good luck in Russian court buddy. They are losing everything. They are burning another $225M to forestal the inevitable and pretend like it is not a complete loss but it is only a matter of time.
  - techinformed56 9y ago
    Yandex.taxi is a service provided by Yandex. The deal talks nothing about licesing agreement for Yandex infrastructure (maps etc). So the claim you make above is under premise that ride sharing will not make money at all and money spend on infrastructure will be far more than what ride hailing can generate. So if this assumption is wrong then we are in different argument on whether ride hailing is a sustainable business at all. Every investor is investing hoping ride hailing will be a profitable business. If it is then this combined entity has more to gain than lose.
    - calafrax 9y ago
      I am not saying that the business is not profitable. I am just saying that Yandex is going to take it all. If Yandex can take Uber's stake, which is worth billions as you say, they would be stupid not to, and they can, so they will.

kgwgk 9y ago

The whole thing "will be valued at $3.73 billion", so it's perfectly possible that the total contribution of Yandex (cash and non-cash) is much larger than the contribution of Uber.

oscii 9y ago

From the article: > In Russia, Yandex.Taxi has gross bookings of $1.01 billion on an annualized basis, while Uber had $566 million, according to a presentation prepared for investors. Two companies will be merged (in Russia), but the brands will stay. The investment-stake asymmetry is probably due to the difference in the gross bookings.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

skinnymuch 9y ago

The overall company is worth $3B though, right? Seems like a good deal for Uber since they do half the revenue of Yandex. Uber was never going to be allowed to win Russia and they can lower the money they were pouring into Russia, sans this one time $225M. Probably save more from however much they were hemorraging. Just like with the Chinese merger, I think this is a good thing. Gets Uber to stop burning so much money.

techinformed56 9y ago

If you read other articles you can see that Uber spent 170M in Russia till now. Along with this 225M its a total 395M of spending. And now they got 36.6% stake in a company (now a leader in Russia) worth 3.4B. So Uber got 1.4B. How is that not coming out with anything? Uber did same thing in China. While we all think they lost in China, Uber seems to have spent around 2B or so but got away with close to 8B stake in Didi (leader in China). Any investor will be happy with those returns.

calafrax 9y ago
They own a minority stake in an entity that has to pay Yandex for infrastructure, licensing rights and advertising which Yandex controls. So this entity racks up a lot of debt (to Yandex) while making transfer payments to Yandex and then in a few years: "whoops, bankrupt!" Now the equity holders (Uber) get wiped out and the company re-organizes and sells its assets (to Yandex) to pay off its debts (to Yandex) and Uber gets nothing. Oh, NO! That's not legal! That's not fair! Good luck in Russian court buddy. They are losing everything. They are burning another $225M to forestal the inevitable and pretend like it is not a complete loss but it is only a matter of time.
- techinformed56 9y ago
  Yandex.taxi is a service provided by Yandex. The deal talks nothing about licesing agreement for Yandex infrastructure (maps etc). So the claim you make above is under premise that ride sharing will not make money at all and money spend on infrastructure will be far more than what ride hailing can generate. So if this assumption is wrong then we are in different argument on whether ride hailing is a sustainable business at all. Every investor is investing hoping ride hailing will be a profitable business. If it is then this combined entity has more to gain than lose.
  - calafrax 9y ago
    I am not saying that the business is not profitable. I am just saying that Yandex is going to take it all. If Yandex can take Uber's stake, which is worth billions as you say, they would be stupid not to, and they can, so they will.