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Listed below are various analysis of the competitive economics and financial performance of Uber. These  are based on Horan's 40 years of experience in the management and regulation of transportation companies. Horan has no financial links  with any urban car service industry competitors, investors or  regulators, or any firms that work on behalf of industry participants.

 See bottom of page for downloadable copies 

Transportation Law Journal article

Will the Growth of Uber Increase Economic Welfare?

Citation: 44 Transp. L.J., 33-105 (2017)
Available for download at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2933177

The  detailed (30,000 word) analysis of Uber’s historical development,  financial performance and competitive economic, based on data available  as of July 2017. Includes over 200 citations of contemporary media  reports and industry analysis.
 

American Affairs Magazine article 

Uber's Path of Destruction American Affairs, vol.3 no. 2, Summer 2019, pp.108-133
Provides a 9,000 word overview of Uber's development, economic issues and financial results through early 2019. 

ProMarket series on the role of academics in Uber's propaganda program--Nov/Dec 2019

The  first two of these three articles summarize Uber's hopeless economics  and the PR/propaganda program that created the widespread impression  that a company that had lost over $20 billion between 2015 and 2019 was  actually a highly successful business that had produced huge economic  welfare benefits for consumers and cities. The third article documents  Uber's use of academics from prestigious institutions in this propaganda  program and includes detailed critiques of four of the most important  Uber-sponsored academic papers. All of the papers were designed to allow  Uber to claim that key PR claims were backed by rigorous, independent  academic research. However none of the papers actually analyzed their  nominal subjects (compartaive taxi operating productivity, the labor  market for taxi drivers, changes in consumer welfare since Uber's entry,  or factors affecting overall driver welfare) and all of the papers  deliberately ignored the massive, unsustainable subsidies that  completely invalidates all their central claims.

The “Uber Files” are not the Uber exposé you are looking for--The Blind Spot 17 July 2022

This critique of The Guardian’s extensive series based on leaked Uber files from 2013-2017 was co-authored by Izabella Kaminska. I was interviewed for and quoted in Part three of The Guardian’s series. 

The “Uber Files” was the first attempt by any mainstream media outlet to provide a “big picture” overview of Uber, and its depictions of lawbreaking and hyper-aggressive lobbying are completely accurate. But the series inexplicably ignores the biggest piece of the Uber story--its abysmal financial losses and uncompetitive economics. As a result The Guardian’s readers had no way to understand that the bad behaviour described was not due to a few rogue actors that have long since left the company but was part of a well-orchestrated strategy that directly supported its investors objectives. Uber’s lobbying and PR programs were always designed to prevent the public from understanding that Uber never had any potential to produce large-scale taxi service at prices the market would pay, and no potential to earn sustainable profits. While Uber claims that its behavioral problems were completely solved by 2018 management changes, those changes had no impact on the fundamental hopelessness of Uber’s business model, or its use of deceitful lobbying/PR to hide its financial weakness. 

Presentation to Grant's Fall Conference, New York 23 October 2019

Uber's Disruptive War on Economic Welfare

Presentation to the Lexington Transportation Group, Chicago 31 October 2018

An Airline/Railroad Economist Looks At Uber

  See bottom of page for downloadable copies 

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 1-5—Nov-Dec 2016

Parts  1-4 include the original versions of arguments (subsequently published  in the TLJ article) about Uber’s dismal financial results, uncompetitive  economics, and its explicit pursuit of unregulated industry dominance  based on data available in 2016; Part 5 answers questions raised by  readers of Parts 1-4
 
Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 6-10—Jan-Jun 2017
Part 6 updated the evidence from part 1 on Uber’s dismal financial results.

Part  7 outlined Uber’s PR “narrative” and part 9 documented how this  “narratives” had been taken directly from propaganda narratives  developed in the 1990s by well-funded groups seeking the complete  elimination of all forms of governmental oversight over the taxi  industry.

Other  material here (which is not included in the TLJ article) addressed the  major flaws in well-publicized pro-Uber pieces, including (in part 8) a  major book on Uber by Bloomberg’s senior tech industry reporter and  totally ignored all available evidence about Uber’s economics, totally  whitewashed the cultural and ethical issues that had engulfed Uber in  controversy, and argued the book should be seen as PR advocacy, and not  as journalism.

Part  10 describes major Uber events in the first half of 2017, including an  internal investigation of systematic sexual harassment at Uber and the  forced resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.
 

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 11-15—Dec 2017-Jun 2018

Parts 11, 13, and  15 update the documentation of Uber’s staggering losses based on newly  published data through (respectively) 3Q2017, 4Q2017 and 1Q2018. Parts  12 and 14 examine major pro-Uber pieces in mainstream publications  (Bloomberg and the New Yorker) and show how they systematically ignore  financial/economic data while emphasizing unsubstantiated Uber PR  narrative claims. Part 16 demonstrates why the first published forecast  of future Uber profitability and potential IPO valuation  (by  Morningstar) was totally indefensible and worthless.
 

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 16-21--Aug 2018-Sept 2019
These Naked  Capitalism articles document Uber's 2018 financial results and events  leading up to the 2019 Lyft and Uber IPOs. Part 16 demonstrates why the  first published forecast of future Uber profitability and potential IPO  valuation (by Morningstar) was totally indefensible and worthless. Part  18 examined Lyft's IPO prospectus (which included the first public  release of historical financial results) and its failure to explain how  the ridesharing business could ever become profitable. Part 19 examined  Uber's IPO propsectus and documented how Uber had massively inflated  claimed P&L improvements by categorizing the alleged value of  untradable financial paper related to failed and discontinued operations  as current profits from ongoing operations. Part 20 discussed the  results of the two "train-wreck" IPOs and how the actual results failed  to change the media narrative describing both as highly valuable  companies.  Part 21 critiques the Uber book published by New York Times  reporter Mike Issac which totally ignores Uber's uncompetitive economics  and terrible financial performance, and attributes Uber's various  problems to the idiosyncratic personalities of its executives and Board  members.

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 22-24--Feb-Aug 2020
 Part  22 of the Naked Capitalism series documents Uber's full year 2019  financial results. Uber's published 2019 GAAP loss was $8.5 billion,  with a profit margin of negative 60%. The article notes accounting  misstatements discussed previously in the series, where the alleged  future value of untradeable financial notes was improperly classified as  profits from ongoing operations, and where the costs of stock-based  compensation for work performed over multiple years were assigned to a  single quarter. Adjusting for these accounting issues produced a 2019  loss of $5.9 billion and a negative 42% margin. The article also  documented the continuing slow down of growth in Uber's core business,  and explained why Uber's promise of "profitability" by the end of 2020  was highly dubious. Part 23 documents Uber's first half 2020 results,  including the coronavirus impacts that first hit during the second  quarter. Second quarter rides revenue declined 74% versus the fourth  quarter of 2019. Uber burned $4.0 billion in cash in the first half  versus a fully year 2019 cash burn of $5.1 billion. Part 25 details full year 2020 results, where a GAAP loss of $6.8 billion brought five-year losses to $25 billion

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 25-29 Aug 2021-Feb 2022
Part 25 examined Didi’s June IPO prospectus, and the post-IPO collapse of its equity value. It demonstrated that the Didi and Uber business models were virtually identical, indicating that even if Uber had Didi’s level (90+%) of home market dominance it would still be massively unprofitable. It suggested that while Beijing’s major crackdown on tech companies had purely political components, most of its actions attempted to restore the government’s ability to address problems (open pursuit of anti-competitive market dominance, use of market power to evade local laws and to exploit drivers and suppliers, improper use of customer data, etc) where the unchecked power of US based tech companies had given them effective immunity from any form of oversight. 

Part 26 summarized Uber and Lyft’s first half 2021 financial results. When adjusted to eliminate the claimed appreciation of non-marketable securities related to markets they had abandoned, their GAAP net margins were negative 38% (Uber) and negative 49% (Lyft). Part 26 also demonstrated how the public announcements of both companies emphasized a fake (“Adjusted EBITDA”) profitability measure in order to mislead investors and the media about their actual profit performance. 

Part 27 discussed two June publications that exemplified two of Uber’s primary PR propaganda techniques. In the first, a 4000-word New York Time article uncritically repeated a wide range of Uber claims without ever mentioning its massive losses, or ever explaining how it might someday become profitable. In the second, two academics from University of California published a paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research that used an indefensible (and non-replicable) regression analysis to claim that Uber’s market entry had reduced US traffic fatalities by over 6%. The sole purpose was to provide Uber supporters (in particular the Wall Street Journal) the ability to falsely suggest that the alleged huge Uber benefits had been validated by independent, highly rigorous academic research. 

Part 28 discussed Uber's 3Q 2021 results. While Uber's press releases attributed reduced losses to pandemic recovery driven demand growth,  its reported numbers showed that gains were entirely due to its ability to retain a higher share of gross customer payments, while reducing payments to drivers and restaurants.

Part 29 reported how Uber FY 2921 results brought its cumulative losses from ongoing operations to $31 billion.It also presented City of Chicago data that documented the magnitude of the car service capacity growth driven by ridesharing (375% between 2014-19) and how they totally abandoned their "flood capacity at extremely low prices" strategy was completely abandoned after the pandemic hit

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 30-33 (Jul 2022-Aug 2023)

Part 30, co-authored with Izabella Kaminska, reviewed “The Uber Files” a major critique published by the Guardian. It claimed its headline finding: “Uber broke laws, duped police and secretly lobbied governments, leak reveals” was new information based on whistleblower revelations. In fact, while all of the charges of bad behavior were factually accurate, all had been widely reported when they originally occurred. More importantly the article failed to explain that this was not aberrant behavior by a handful of bad actors but was part of Uber’s well-organized efforts to conceal and distract attention from its terrible economics and financial performance. Parts 31-33 summarize Uber’s financial results for the first and second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023. Part 31 discusses how a major improvement in Uber margins was entirely due to keeping a larger share of customer payments and cutting the share drivers received. Part 32 notes that Uber had remained immune from the major equity collapse of “tech” startups that had failed to produce sustainable profits. Part 33 discusses how that recent margin improvements were unlikely to continue since most of the sources of these gains had been exhausted.  

Can Uber Ever Deliver? Parts 34 and 35 (February 2025)

Part 34 puts Tony West’s central role in Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign into the broader context of his career at Uber and DOJ. When the California legislature codified Supreme Court protections for independent contractors, West led a $200 million campaign falsely claiming a big majority of Uber drivers opposed them (and outspending opponents 10:1) to overturn them. Squashing these driver legal rights immediately raised the market capitalization of (the still highly unprofitable) Uber by $36 billion (over 60%) and drove over $6 billion in annual wealth transfers from drivers to shareholders. West had previously led Uber’s coverup of efforts by top executives to discredit a woman who had been raped by an Uber driver. Before joining Uber West led the Obama DOJ’s efforts to ensure that no financial institution faced serious legal liability after the 2008 crash.

Part 35 updates previously prevented Uber and Lyft P&L results to include full year 2024. Uber posted a $2.8 billion operating profit (6% margin) but following practices it has been using since 2018, massively misrepresented its actual net earnings from its actual, ongoing business operations. These were inflated by a claimed $1.8 billion appreciation in untradable securities Uber received when it shut down failed operations, and a 4th quarter $6 billion tax valuation release that was not explained but was related to operations over a much longer time-horizon. The miniscule profit Lyft reported ($22 million) was its first ever GAAP profit. Part 35 explains that Uber’s transition from massive losses ($33 billion through 2022) to small profits was overwhelmingly driven by its establishment of sustainable anti-competitive market power, thanks to its long history of predatory behavior, and its success crushing attempts to establish even rudimentary labor law protections for drivers.

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Has Pando missed the heart of the Uber problem? A transportation industry expert writes...---December 1, 2015

https://pando.com/2015/12/01/has-pando-missed-heart-uber-problem-transportation-industry-expert-writes/

Uber an avatar of innovation and progress? The economic evidence says otherwise--March 10,2017.

https://pando.com/2017/03/10/yes-all-fowler-greyball-waymo-issues-are-reflection-uber-business-model-fundamentally-unfixably-broken/

Interview on ABC Television (Australia) Four Corners program 

The Uber Story

Video and transcript of Four Corners broadcast of 18 March 2019

https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/the-uber-story/10912940

Interview on Harry Shearer's Le Show 

harryshearer.com/le-shows/december-01-2019/