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Lyft CEO David Risher reportedly says company is 'open' to acquisition offers
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoThe era of free money ending is going to be interesting I think. Uber‘a model basically revolves around people not being able to do the calculus of driving for ride share. And Lyft is just a smaller player. I don’t see how they survive if they need to make dollars and not just valuation numbers.
- bombcar 3y agoThey survive by being a 10-20% fee for taxi dispatch.
- Gareth321 3y agoI would pay a 30% premium to never have to use a regular taxi service again. Surely they can find a way to make this profitable with a reasonable premium.
- bnjms 3y agoMight be better if they cannot make it work and pay back all the investments then bankrupt. Another company can replace them with the correct expectations. I would also pay 30% + fair wage. Albeit less frequently. There was no functional taxi service in my metro before Uber and Lyft.
- ttul 3y agoI hope a merger between Uber and Lyft is blocked by regulators. It would doubtless lead to higher fees and lower regard for ride share drivers.
- snarf21 3y agoWould you rather them go out of business? Or downsize to only be available in high density, high income areas? I honestly don't see an end game, do you? The hope was that self driving was close and they just needed to capture market until then and then remove their largest line up and print money. Obviously, self-driving is very far away, especially in poor weather. Also, I don't think "regard for drivers" can go much lower. I do agree that their pay would suffer post merger as they lost the need to be even remotely competitive but I think there is a lower limit where drivers won't drive for net $3/hour.
- voakbasda 3y agoYes, these companies should go out of business. They have been losing billions of dollars every year. They have actively subverted the laws. They should not exist in any sane world.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoI have already filed a preemptive complaint with the FTC and DOJ requesting they block any merger attempt between Uber and Lyft. I encourage you to do the same. A merger would bolster the remaining enterprise's market power, and they're going to shed redundant jobs anyway in a merger ("efficiencies"). Better to let both continue to exist with razor thin margins, like supermarkets. The only stakeholder that benefits from consolidation is shareholders. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation https://www.justice.gov/atr/citizen-complaint-center https://www.justice.gov/atr/citizen-complaint-center
- CydeWeys 3y agoThe point is, if Lyft goes out of business, it has the same effect on the market for rideshare prices as an acquisition does, so why not allow the merger so it's less disruptive and more employees get to keep their jobs?
- eganist 3y ago
- cco 3y agoI've said this elsewhere, but Cruise! Fully autonomous isn't ready in all situations, Cruise could get an overnight install base. I've no idea if Cruise could afford it, I think it's in the realm of possibility with a quick Google, but that's my pitch.
- jrpt 3y agoI don't think self-driving car companies need users so badly they'd want to acquire Lyft at a premium, because I don't think they could scale their fleet to Lyft's customer base that quickly. However, if the price is right, I could see one doing it.
- wbl 3y agoWhy would they buy a product with very little loyalty on part of the users?
- wwarner 3y agoIsn't that the idea? The ride-share co distinguishes itself by offering (some) driverless rides, and the self-driving company can say it has real passengers. Synergy!
- dougSF70 3y agoSelf driving taxis are the domain of cash-rich and time-rich people. Like an uber it just takes 30% longer to get there on account of the law-abiding nature of the "driver"
- Sparkle-san 3y agoCruise is owned by General Motors which was rumored to be considereding acquiring Lyft late last year. I think given the history between Lyft and GM, it's very possible at this point.
- reducesuffering 3y ago$4.9 billion VC investment into Lyft. Current market cap: $3 billion
- habosa 3y agoAnd yet the VCs profited. So … who paid?
- reducesuffering 3y agoAnyone who bought into their $25 billion IPO while VC was offloading, unfortunately including our total market indices.
- habosa 3y agoI have taken hundreds of Ubers and Lyfts. They’re both pretty essential to my mobility because I live in a city and don’t own a car. I’m so furious that neither of them really had a plan all along. They were just selling $1.00 for $0.50 and hoping something would change (self driving? monopoly?) I’ve started trying to avoid ride share whenever possible but it’s too late. They put the cabs out of business. They snarled our cities in traffic. They made public transit a non-option for the affluent. And maybe worst of all they changed how we plan our days. People expect you can always just “hop in an Uber” to get across the city at a moments notice, there’s no patience anymore. And now they’re both charging more and more for rides and still failing to make enough money to cover their corporate overhead. Which is pathetic, since they don’t own the cars or employ the drivers. Meanwhile the drivers name make less and less and the smarter/luckier ones find something better to do. When we look back and write the history of this time, I hope we see them as city destroyers.
- addisonl 3y ago> They snarled our cities in traffic Would like to see the data backing this claim up.
- wpietri 3y agoThere have been a bunch of studies. A quick Google finds this relatively recent one: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congestion-car-ownership-study/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/uber-lyft-traffic-congest... But intuitively it's not surprising. Imagine a world without rideshare, but where the taxi companies just got way better, dropping prices and improving service. Use would go up. People who were driving before were either going to keep driving or user rideshare. Some transit trips would switch. A bunch of new trips would happen because the bar is lower. More trips means more traffic, and the areas where rideshare is most popular were not exactly known for low traffic before.
- ghaff 3y agoIt's logical. Better/cheaper taxi-like services are almost certainly not going to lead to more investment in and use of public transit. And while they may be one of a number of factors that let people more easily forgo private car ownership at the margins, it's hard to see it being a huge factor.
- siliconc0w 3y agoUltimately these aren't tech businesses, it (should be) a pretty low margin commodity business of basically taxi dispatch and if we had functional cities most of that wouldn't be needed because of public transportation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sokoloff 3y agoI can't think of a city with functional public transportation that doesn't have a taxi service. (I'm sure someone will come along and post one, which will be an interesting bit of trivia, but every city I can think of with good public transport also has some kind of taxi/close-equivalent service.)
- rsynnott 3y agoSure, but it’s a question of relative size and importance. There’s probably always a use for some taxis, but you’re going to need more the worse the public transport system is.
- ghaff 3y agoIt's not clear as a general statement. Manhattan has a pretty decent public transit system but there are also a huge number of taxis because the combination of the density and the subway system means relatively fewer residents own cars relative to more spread out cities without decent public transit.
- smachar24 3y ago[flagged]
- m3kw9 3y agoI would say the offer won’t be higher than the current stock price given how hard it is to make money
- fauxpause_ 3y agoWhy would shareholders be willing to give up something for less than they think it is worth
- wpietri 3y agoJust looking at the stock price graph over the last few years, where it has fallen nearly 90%, they might be glad to have their misery put to an end. Remember that market price is what you can get for selling a small number of shares. But the companies that own large blocks may not be able to exit their positions in the normal market without taking a further loss.
- fauxpause_ 3y agoIt’s a liquid stock. You can sell it right now. There’s no world where you hope for it to get bought at less than the current market price but don’t think it makes sense to sell your holdings at the current price. This is true even if the selling of your holdings causes the market price to drop.
- wpietri 3y agoThe top 10 Lyft shareholders between them own 38.2% of the company. The single largest shareholder alone has 13.3%. Is your serious belief that the top shareholder can just go out and sell their 49,198,218 shares and get the current market price for each one? Who exactly do you think is hanging around with a half-billion in cash thinking "Gosh, Lyft would be a good buy if it were one cent lower, but it's not good enough for me to buy right now?"
- fauxpause_ 3y ago
- braza 3y agoUltimately the sad truth is that Lyft was one of the companies that rode the zero interest rate phenomena (no pun intended).
- actionablefiber 3y agoI do not care what happens to the rideshare business, but I am worried about Motivate and all of the systems that they operate. Capital Bikeshare is one of the reasons why my monthly transportation costs are less than $50.
- tikkun 3y agoI think that publicly saying you're open to acquisition offers means that you really badly would like an acquisition offer.
- rvz 3y agoThis is a chronically unprofitable company and anyone who bought at the IPO price has just been exit liquidity. The VCs and founders who cashed out on IPO day are the only winners in this failure. After years of Lyft predicting profits quarter after quarter, we have given Lyft enough time and it seems they are on course to be either acquired by private equity or at worse case, filing for bankruptcy. I mean, it wasn't really a surprise to see this go all the way down...[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21328967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21328967
- surgical_fire 3y ago> This is a chronically unprofitable company and anyone who bought at the IPO price has just been exit liquidity. The VCs and founders who cashed out on IPO day are the only winners in this failure. So... They are a success story? You basically described the whole startup grift.
- rvz 3y ago> So... They are a success story? I've already explained who's success story it is: > The VCs and founders who cashed out on IPO day are the only winners in this failure. For the rest of retail and new investors: > ...anyone who bought at the IPO price has just been exit liquidity. A business that has constantly raised VC cash before IPO and now still remains chronically unprofitable even after IPO and has being loaned more post-IPO debt doesn't seem to be a great business success story for the new investors holding the stock since it IPO'd. > You basically described the whole startup grift. Indeed. Let's see if any of these new startups will get access to VC cash whilst as easily as the old ones did, especially as most of them are still unprofitable.
- grensley 3y agoThey basically should have built the tech then gone down to a skeleton crew of engineers to maintain it.
- frellus 3y agoI am going to place a bet now if anyone wants to take me up on it. $100 says Amazon will snap them up. With the cloud expenses minimized, and Amazon's own expertise with logistics, it would be a good market for them.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]