Flutterby™! : Uber Prospectus

Oh this is brilliant: RT Colin Charles @bytebot

A lot has been said about the Uber IPO prospectus but maybe none as cogent as this FT comment.

He then embeds a comment, which is behind a paywall, as an image:

horsesatemymoney

Abbreviated version of prospectus

We don't make money

We probably will never make money

Our current business relies on shareholders to fund cheap cab rides in the hope that regulators will let us become a monopoly and charge whatever we want but the regulators are not playing along

We have therefore spent more money expanding into other low margin highly competitive activities like food delivery or trucking despite there being lots of specialist logistics firms so not obvious how we are going to make any money there either.

We hope in the future there will be driverless cars and that we can then make money because no drivers but other people are developing them too

We have annoyed lots of regulators so we have lots of disputes and problems with regulators

We don't pay much tax and have done lots of aggressive tax planning and so we have lots of disputes and problems with tax authorities

We don't employ anyone (or we say we don't) but we have lots of de facto employees and so we have lots of disputes and problems with drivers and employment tribunals

We don't actually own many assets because we managed to get our drivers to provide their own cars

We have an app but other cab companies also have apps

Current investors want to get out so we hope you will buy some shares anyway because you have heard of us also we need more money to fund the businesses that don't make money

We are expanding into more business lines that don't make money and we need more money to fund those

We are really big and you have heard of us plus we say we are a tech disruptor so don't worry that we make no money it will all be great because you will be an Uber investor