저자: CK · 외국인
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Bill Ackman의 Pershing Square가 우버(UBER)를 최대 보유 종목(펀드의 18.5%)으로 편입했다는 점을 근거로, 우버의 영업레버리지(조정 EBITDA 마진 4.4%→장기 7% 목표), FCF 105% 증가, 자율주행 위협의 과대평가를 강조한다. 적정가치를 주당 약 105달러로 제시하며 상승 여력을 주장하나, 자율주행으로 인한 중개자 지위 약화 가능성도 리스크로 언급한다.
다듬은 글
Billionaire investor Bill Aman took to X.com on the 8th of Feb with a quiet bombshell. Persing Square, the fund that is managing, had been building a position in Uber technologies since early Jan. Okay, maybe not too quiet after all since the post has garnered more than 2.4 million views ever since.
And fast forward to today, we now have confirmation from Persing's latest 13F filings. Uber is officially the largest position in a portfolio, making up a staggering 18.5% of the 11.9 billion fund. Now, when a high conviction investor like Bill Eggman makes a move this bull, it's worth asking why. So, what exactly does he see in Uber that the rest of us might be missing?
And more importantly, is there still upside for those who are just coming to the story now? So, let's keep things simple. Today, I want to walk you through Bill Eggman's thesis on Uber Tech, ticker UB. So, the stock is currently trading at roughly $88 per share with a 52- week range between 55 and $93, and it is now testing fresh highs.
So, according to Bill Anhan, Uber is significantly undervalued and he believes that the company's share price could more than double over the next few years. And in this video, we'll unpack the key reasons why he's making Uber his largest position yet. And before we jump into the full breakdown of Uber, if you are into investment sharings like this one, then you'll have to check out something we've just launched.
It's a free weekly newsletter called Investing Bites. So each issue actually delivers bite-size lessons and real world stories straight from our team. And at the start of every month, we also spotlight one standout company we're currently watching along with our internal thesis and why it caught our attention.
And if that sounds exciting to you, head down to the link in the description below and we'll send the latest issue straight to your inbox. Now back to the Uber story. So the first reason for this Uber investment, they are no longer just a right hailing app. So let's start by resetting our understanding of what Uber actually is today.
So most people still think of Uber as just a right hailing business or a glorified taxi app as some might call it, but that couldn't be further from the truth. So Uber today is a global logistics and mobility platform and they operate in over 70 countries, the leading player in more than 30 of them while connecting 170 million monthly active users with 8 million drivers.
So it's also a delivery powerhouse through Uber Eats and the fast growing exposure to freight and enterprise mobility. And the scale here is immense mind you. Uber processes $ 160 billion dollars in gross bookings annually and it split roughly evenly between mobility and the delivery business up and this number is still growing.
In the most recent quarter at least, mobility bookings rose by 20% and delivery grew by 18%. And that's not just pandemic recovery. That's sustained global growth driven by new customers and increasing usage frequency. And what really sets Uber apart is the network effect that they created over the past decade.
The more riders and users it gains, the more efficiently it can match demand with supply. And the more drivers it attracts, the better the experience it is for everyone. Lower weight time, broader coverage, and more competitive pricing to name a few. So this flywheel effect creates a competitive mode that's incredibly hard to replicate.
And like Bill Eman puts it, it's a classic two-sided network. And once scale is actually achieved, it's a monster to compete against. Moving on to reason number two, Uber's operating leverage is kicking in, and it's kicking in hard. A lot of investors actually missed this slight pivot. But Uber has gone from being a company with breakneck topline growth and sky-high cash burn to one with significant operating leverage and more importantly, a clear path to sustained earnings growth.
So, let's break this down. In 2021, Uber was posting negative IBIDA margins, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and advertisation. But as of 2023, the company is now generating an adjusted IBIDA margin of 4.4% on gross bookings. And this was up from 3.7% in Q1 of last year. The icing on the cake, the management's long-term target, is 7%.
7%, mind you. That might sound like a small number, but remember we are talking about 7% margins on $160 billion in booking. And that's over 11 billion in potential IBIDA in the long term. And some investors might ask, how is this happening? So it comes down to two simple things, scale and discipline.
So since DH took over as CEO in 2017, Uber has implemented rigorous cost controls and capital discipline. So they've cut out bloated initiatives, exited unprofitable markets and focused on operational efficiency and headcount growth has largely remained modest around 3% keer even as bookings continue to grow around 20% annually.
And that's where you see that so-called operating leverage. And that's not just accounting trickery. Uber's free cash flow is up 105% year-over-year in 2024 to $6.9 billion. This isn't a money losing growth story anymore. It's a margin expansion story and the market might not have fully priced that in yet.
Now, moving on to reason number three. Autonomous vehicle development is not so much a threat as it might actually be a catalyst to Uber's business. So, one of the biggest reason Uber currently only trades at just under 30 times earnings despite all these operating momentum is actually fear. specifically the fear of autonomous vehicles or AVs for short.
And the best of Uber fervently believe that when autonomous vehicles go mainstream, human drivers become obsolete and so does Uber's core business. So, Bill Eggman has done a deep dive into this concern and they believe that it's completely overblown. Here's why. First, Uber is already partnering with 14 different AV players across delivery, freight, and mobility from Whimo to Aurora.
Second, AV deployment at scale is still many years away. While the tech has made massive strides, there are still major barriers to mass adoption from regulatory approvals to infrastructure buildout to consumer trust. And you still need to solve a myriad of things like superhuman safety profiles, um harmonized legal frameworks across states, real-time support and liability management, parking and charging infrastructure to name a few.
So even when these hurdles are overcome, AVs will likely launched in controlled geographies with limited use cases. And as Eggman puts it, that's not an existential threat. That's an opportunity for Uber to become the aggregator, an interface for AV fleets, just like what they're doing with human drivers today.
And Eggman's team actually believes that instead of AVs destroying Uber, they could actually expand Uber's market. So rides could become significantly cheaper, trip frequencies could increase, and Uber with its unmatched customer demand and routing data is best to be positioned to partner and scale with these AV providers.
Now let's talk about Uber's valuation. So they're currently trading at 29 times forward earnings. And for some investors, that sounds pretty expensive. But if you to zoom out, we are talking about a company growing earnings at 20 plus% per year with free cash flow compounding, share buybacks accelerating, and a long-term margin target still not yet priced in.
And here's how Billman thinks about this. So long-term IBIDA margins of roughly 7% on $160 billion booking, that's equivalent to 11 billion IBIDA. And if you apply a 20 times IBIDA multiple, that's roughly 220 billion in terms of enterprise value for the entire business. If to subtract the modest net debt amount and divide by the number of outstanding shares, you get roughly $105 per share.
And all of this calculation has yet to account for the optionalities in areas like advertising, freight, AV partnerships, or Uber for business. And if any of those businesses take off, this could potentially be a multi-year compounder with structural tailwinds. And as Eggman said it best, so this combination of attributes are extremely rare, particularly for a company of this scale," unquote.
And you don't often get a well-run, high- growth, cash generative platform business at a discount, just because the market is still stuck in the 2019 narrative. Now, of course, no investment is without risks. And there are the usual macroeconomic concerns such as the slowdown of the economic cycle that could dampen mobility demand and the everpresent regulatory uncertainty surrounding gig worker classifications.
But in our view, these aren't the factors that will ultimately determine Uber's long-term value. Instead, the core of the bear case lies in a much deeper existential question. How defensible is Uber's model in a future dominated by autonomous vehicles? So, as one commentator put it under Bill Aman's tweet, Uber's primary value proposition today is simply connecting people who need a car with people who have one.
But what happens when that human element is being removed? Let's say, for example, if Tesla succeeds in rolling out their full self-driving fleet, why would they need Uber at all? they could just easily launch their own right hailing platform bypassing Uber entirely and offer rides at a fraction of that cost because they don't have to pay this middleman fee.
So even if Uber tries to stay in the game by aggregating the AV fleets, the economics might actually shift against them. So, if you think about it, unlike today's fragmented base of individual drivers with no pricing power, future AV operators will likely be a small group of extremely powerful firms, and they each own thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of vehicles capable of negotiating fees on their own terms.
So, the 20 to 30% take rate that we see Uber enjoying today, that might not fly in a world where suppliers have much more leverage than the platform themselves. And we're not just talking about Tesla right here. Imagine calling a ride directly through Google Maps. One tap and a Whimo just shows up in front of you.
And when we talk about Alphabet, the parent company of Google, they already have the distribution, the infrastructure, the global legal teams and the UI advantage. They know how to scale products across borders. And they already control the front door to billions of smartphones. Yes, Uber has built sophisticated algorithms to manage pricing, demand, and fleet logistics.
But if companies like Alphabet or Tesla decides to build in-house, the odds aren't really in Uber's favor. So in that world, Uber actually risks becoming what critics fear most, a commoditized middleman caught between powerful manufacturers and end consumers, competing for this razor thin margin in a space that Uber once led.
All that said, Bill Eman has put out a counter narrative to this line of reasoning. So, it's easy to imagine a future where companies like Tesla or Google cut Uber out of the equation entirely. But the reality of building a fully autonomous, economically viable right share network is far more complex than we might actually think, especially when you factor in demand variability.
So, one of the largest challenges in the right hailing business is that demand fluctuates wildly throughout the day, week or year. Demand can sometimes vary as much as 10 times over the course of just one week alone. And yet, consumers want low prices and minimal weight times at all hours, but supply and demand rarely aligns themselves.
So, that's where Uber's marketplace actually excel. It facilitates dynamic real-time supply by allowing drivers to search in and out of the network during high demand periods. And in contrast, a fleet of standalone AVs would probably be underutilized during off- peak times or overwhelmed during rush hours, leading to unstable pricing and poor user experience.
And Ecman argues that the most viable solution isn't to do it alone, but to partner with platforms like Uber. So think of AVs as the base load energy source, consistent, efficient, but unable to meet spikes and human drivers remain essential for the peak periods. So Uber provides AV operators with a scalable way to dispatch rides only when it makes economic sense, maximizing the vehicle utilization and minimizing the cost per mile.
In return, Uber earns a take rate. And while AV manufacturers might grumble about paying it, it's a small price to pay to access Uber's global infrastructure, user base, and real-time dispatch engine. And instead of being a disrupted, Uber might potentially become the essential infrastructure in the AV future.
So where do you stand on this AV topic? Feel free to leave in the comments below. So Uber today is not the same company it was 5 years ago. It has evolved from a cash burning growth story into a far leaner, far more disciplined business with improving margins and rising free cash flow. So today, Bill Eggman's investment signals his confidence in Uber's transformation and its potential to become a long-term compounder.
So for now, Uber still remains the default choice for millions of consumers around the world. But it's also clear that Uber's long-term mode may not be as impenetrable as some might have thought. The threat from autonomous vehicle is not about whether they will arrive, but it's about what happens when they do.
And if companies like Tesla and Whimo decides to bypass Uber entirely, the economics and the power dynamics of the right share market could probably shift dramatically. At the end of the day, Uber offers a compelling mix of operating momentum, undervalued cash flow, and optionality. But it also faces one of the most disruptive technological shift of our time.
Whether it thrives or it gets disintegrated will really depend on how well it adapts to this new future. For now, it remains a fascinating company to watch. And this is CK from Piranha Profit signing off. Till next time, keep winning.
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