Saturday, May 11, 2019

Peak Insanity

The value of a company is the present value of its expected cash flows in the future.  The value of a stock is  (dividend per share) / (discount rate - growth rate), or P = D / (R - G), where G is the expected growth rate of the dividends. So how do you value a stock that has no dividends and never will have dividends?  Its value is obviously zero.

So anyone who would buy such a stock is insane.  And (I'm going to channel my inner Karl here) anyone who would promote such a stock is a crook who belongs in prison for breaking the blue sky laws.  Although maybe that would violate the stock purchaser's inherent constitutional right to be stupid.

Lyft had revenue of $2.2 billion in 2018 with losses of $911 million, up from revenue of $1.1 billion in 2017 with losses of $688 million.  The first day of trading (March 29) closed at $78.29 per share, up from the opening of $72/share, giving the company a market value of $22.2 billion.  Its price is currently $51.09 per share, giving it a market value of $14.6 billion.

Uber had revenue of $11.3 billion in 2018 with losses of $1.8 billion, up from $7.5 billion in 2017 with losses of $2.2 billion.  Uber went public yesterday (May 10) at $45/share, and closed at $41.57, given it a market value of $69.7 billion, far below the $100 billion that it claimed it was worth.

The fact that either company has a stock price above zero proves that the entire stock market is insane and has jumped the shark, like Fonzie on jet skis.

Uber and Lyft are todays version of Pets.com, which had an IPO in February 2000 and shut down 9 months later.  These two companies might survive until 2020, but there is no way they will survive the next recession.

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