저자: RenéSellmann · 외국인
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빌 애크먼의 Square Capital이 2025년 초 우버(UBER) 지분을 약 30.3백만 주(약 23억 달러) 매수했다고 발표. 애크먼은 우버의 강력한 네트워크 효과, CEO 다라 코스로샤히의 비용 관리와 현금창출력, 연 30% 이상 주당순이익 성장, 영업이익률 확대와 자사주 매입 가능성을 근거로 제시. 발표자는 PER 밸류에이션 매력은 인정하나 세금 혜택으로 인한 일회성 이익 부풀림, 주식보상 비용, 운전자 처우 문제, 자율주행 위협을 지적하며 본인은 보유하지 않는다고 밝힘.
다듬은 글
this week Bill Amman made headlines as he revealed that his hch fund persan Square Capital initiated a position in Uber and in fact Amman made Uber one of the largest positions in his entire stock portfolio later during the week he also shared a presentation in which he outlined the investment thesis behind the Uber purchase so in this video we're going to break down the different pillars of his thesis and so without further Ado let's get started all right not too long ago on the 7th of February Bill egman revealed on X that his headgun fing Square Capital started a position in the right hailing company Uber you can see the tweet that he put out on screen right now and let me just read it to you he wrote beginning in early January so after Q4 has closed that's why the most recent 1f file B Blackman does not include that position yet so beginning in early January we began acquiring a position in U today we own 30.3 million shares let me just show you one tweet that I put out basically the same day I think that highlighted what a big bad this really is so if we look at the 30 million shares owned by um Amman multiply it by the current share price or the share price back then was $76 a share I think as of today it's $79 but back then based on $76 per share price the stake represents more than2 billion US 2.3 billion us more specifically L and I think few people realize how big that bat actually is if you take a look at the overall portfolio here in the screenshot and actually I included a screenshot of the most recent portfolio course by now the q43 F was revealed as well and as you can see here 2.3 billion position is going to be one of the highest weighted positions in his entire portfolio you have to be aware that the Google position um a Psy is because Amman owns both share classes so Google represents around 15% and then you also have to be aware that Amman owns shares in Universal Music Group which is not listed in the US and hence doesn't appear in 1 FS but I think that's also quite a material position in his overall portfolio but regardless of the exact math here the Uber purchase represents one of the biggest BS Amman has placed more recently and that's of course big news going back to his initial tweet so then he wrote I have been a long customer and admirer of uber beginning when Edward Norton showed me the app in its early days I was also fortunate to be a day one investor in the company through a small small investment in a venture fund while a great business Uber suffered from erratic management since he joined the company in 2017 there kro Shahi CEO has done a superb job in transforming the company into a highly profitable and cash generative growth machine keep in mind that being highly cash generative that's one of the key pillars of of a of a business that bacman is looking for we believe that Uber is one of the best managed and highest quality businesses in the world remarkably it can be can still be purchased at a massive discount to its intrinsic value this favorable combination of attributes is extremely rare particularly for a large cap company we'll have more to share about our thinking on the company shortly and that's what I said I will get to in a moment so what I'm going to show you here is just a a response by The Uber CEO himself he thanked bill for the trust you puts in the company and he's looking forward to yeah continued engagement with Bill to find areas in which Uber can do better improve as business and so on and so forth okay before we move on and actually take a look at the presentation that bill shared a little later here's the share price performance of uber and as you can see the stock has done all right it returned 94% over this 5year time period which reflects a almost 15% K so when I said it did all right that's an understatement a 15% compound return is of course fantastic year to date the stock is also up 30 33% you can see the spike in the chart in the top right corner already so I feel like the sentiment towards Uber which was well I would argue a little more bearish more recently has shifted again okay if we now actually take a look at the thesis of blackb and the various elements of his investment thesis we're going to take a look at the presentation that he shared on February 11th there were four slides in total focus on Uber specifically so I'm going to break down some parts of his investment thesis so first of all he highlighted and I want to be clear here not too long ago I published a video on Uber myself in which I discussed the various advantages of Uber's business model that I see in Uber in more detail so I'm not going to cover that here I'm going to pretty much primarily or exclusively focus on what egman had to share in this presentation so he just like I do sees strong Network effects that are super hard to replicate by any upand cominging competitor just because reaching the scale that Uber has reached is incredibly hard so he points to the monthly active customers the bar chart that you can see towards the bottom of this slide here is actually taken from the most recent earnings result from Uber and highlights that the monthly active customers are really growing at a at a high clip low to mid teens rate and has has reached 171 as of the most recent quarter then if we move on then he highlighted and that's something he highlighted in the initial tweet already that he has a lot of trust in the CEO of uber Dar kosro Shai I'm not sure if I if I mispronounced his name here SE highlights here again and that's what he said in the tweet that he believes he did he did a great job making Uber actually profitable making it a qu him here again highly cash generative company and he braises his his cost discipline here which is something that I have also highlighted in my initial video which I included this quote here from the CEO himself I think this was taken from an earnings call not too long ago and he wrote or he said a low take rate creates a meaningful barrier to entry second a low take rate helps create internal pressure on the organization to constantly drive out costs and ensure that we are running the network as efficiently as possible you see that in every quarter rep report sort of a few basis points of incremental margin that we are able to extract from our cost structure by continuing to grind on those costs again that reflects Uber's sort of that operational part of the organization and again I think Amman is right the management team and the CEO specifically seems to be super cost conscious which is something as an investor you like to see because this will ultimately Drive margins higher and make the business yeah almost as profitable as possible and the comments of the initial tweet that Amman put out in which he revealed that Persian square is now Uber an Uber shareholder the CEO actually engaged a little conversation with thatman here so for example he asked him about suggestions how to improve the Uber uh business bill made a couple of points here highlighted that he sometimes wants to book multiple rights at once for family members for example which is not possible he was also pointing to the to the Tipping system of of the Uber app and yeah I feel like the CEO was quite responsive here was eager to learn more about how the Uber customer experience can be improved and again those would be sort of green flags that I would like to see in a CEO moving on in the presentation and right here he actually highlights three parts so aan the first one is that he expects the business to grow its earnings on a per share basis at a rate of 30% at least over the next several years so over the midterm and this is reflected in the screenshot you can see on the top you can basically see the analyst estimates for earnings per share grow with over the next 2 years that was calculated by ticker and I think what they do is they take a look at at a bunch of different analyst estimates and they take the average or maybe the mean of it so here you can see that these analysts are also guiding for 31% growth next year and 22% growth in 2027 so yeah Amman maybe on to something here I think that's probably a reasonable forecast to believe in then the second pillar of what he wrote here is that he believes there will be margin expend and that of course is related to the first point I think the margin expansion itself will contribute to the say 20 to 30% earning share growth that Uber could potentially reach over the coming years in the background you see the ebit margin profile and how it developed over time so as you can see for the most part of its public history Uber was actually unprofitable so up to say late 2021 the business was losing money on an ebit basis and ever since has become more and more profitable as of the most recent quarter and I think those are last 12 month numbers yes the ebit margin stands at around 6 to 7% per 6.36 and obviously what you have to ask yourself is where is the ceiling how much more profitable can Uber actually get and I'll get to that I'll discuss that in a little more detail in a moment and then the last part that I want to highlight here and that Amman highlighted in his presentation that he thinks share repurchases will also contribute to the return that investors are going to experience if we go back to the earnings per share growth forecast the 30% may be partly attributable to the share count of the overall company being reduced as you can see over the last 3 years at least the share count has actually been trending upward so I guess you would want to bet that there's going to be a reversal that you can observe in a reversal at some point I'm not sure how likely that is that would be something where um not necessarily with Amman I mean he's not specifically talking about check on reduction but I know that that is something he likes to see in companies too the problem with Uber is that the company is paying its employees in stock based stock based compensation quite a lot so you also see the stock based compensation here over time which is running upward and I've talked about this in my initial video that the free cash flow generated by the business adjusted for stock base compensation is actually not that material or at least not as high as the ebit margins would for example reflect All Right Moving On In eggman's presentation he then wrote currently Uber is trading at 25 times at 29 times earnings due to concerns regarding their potential long-term threat from autonomous vehicles and I highlighted a more recent PE chart and basically valuation multiples VAR valuation multiples chart here as well after the more recent quarter in which Uber once again posted pretty pretty good results I think due to an increase in earnings the multiple has actually come down further so on the last 12 month basis Uber is now rading at a multiple of around 17.4 times 24.2 times on next 12- month basis and 24 times free cash flow on the last 12 month basis again not adjusted for stock based compensation you may Wonder well why is the next 12 month price to earnings multiple higher than the last 12-month price to earnings ratio well that is something that I highlighted in this tweet here the current earnings of uber are actually a little overstated due to yeah various accounting things going on here more or more specifically Uber is benefiting from tax benefits that basically have increased the earnings of uber as a whole but those earnings aren't actual profits so that is something to be aware of and obviously this is a one-time effect all right moving on to another slide from amman's presentation so here you can basically see that he is also believing that Uber is going to benefit from operating leverage effects he wrote there is a large degree of fixed costs allow which allow for significant operating leverage EG 3% annual headcount growth versus 20% annual booking SC since 2019 and I might I think he may be on to something but I looked at Uber I looked at Uber at at a much lower price low 60s I think and what was holding me back a little bit was first of all the valuation but also that I had problems regarding the development of conviction in Uber actually enjoying significant massive operating leverage effects so I think the problem is that Uber actually has a lot of fixed costs in contrast to what egman is saying here I mean if you take a look at at a uber right let's say it's a $20 right usually the tech take rate of uber is around 20 to 25% so let's just say 5% $5 per R per $20 right obviously so as you can already tell the fee that the driver is getting is going to is also going to reflect a huge part of the customer's cost already and then on top of that from the $5 for example you would also have to deduct insurance cost which are significant forber but also some operational expenses but then again there may be some more fixed costs such as research and development and also sales and marketing I get that so there's probably some operating leverage effect left how much however I don't know I think in my initial video I said that I could see Uber getting a 20% margin business but I don't think it's going to be materially higher but again that's a lot of upside still from the current profit margin level uh but we'll have have to wait and see I guess and that's what egman actually also highlights here so he's not necessarily betting on on who reaching say 30% ebit margins no he's he's basically referring to to the company's articulated long-term margin goal of 7% ebda margin all right there are two more slides that Amman shared this one shows the development of the share price over time and also the development of earnings per share he just highlights that what you that's what you can see at the bottom of the slide that he believes Uber's price earnings multiple is low considering the potential growth trajectory of earnings that the business is going to to follow and I I think he's right so if Uber can continue to grow at a rate of 30% over the midterm well then a a mid 20s multiple for example maybe high 20s multiple maybe understating the actual value of of the business maybe be before we move on full disclaimer and I think I said this before personally I don't own any Uber shares and obviously this is not investment advice I'm not interested in Uber right now at the current price I wasn't interested in the low 60s I think Uber the business will probably do well over the long term what the stock will do I'm not so sure I wouldn't want to bet against Uber that's for sure okay the last slide from Amman so first of all here is also highlighting the um per right take rate which he assumes is around 20% and then he highlights oh no let let me add one more thought here so he writes Ubers 20% per right take rate is low relative to the value it provides which maximizes vehicle utilization and Driver revenues I'm not sure if he's 100% spot on here and that is something I've actually discussed in my investing community and one Community member rukie he particularly has stressed various times that he believes Uber from his experience Uber rights have become significantly more expensive and that's what's also reflected in this RIT postive for example Uber is getting more expensive I take Uber lot I have the uh monthly membership I take this same route all the time and historically it's been around $30 per ride today it was over $80 so I'm not sure if there is much room left in terms of pricing power of uber my understanding is and I'm not Uber customer myself I I very rarely use an Uber so let me know what you think but but my understanding is that ubber Uber rights have become significantly more expensive and nowadays aren necessarily cheaper than their typical taxi ride so again I'm not sure if Uber the price of an Uber is cheap relative to the value it provides today which would certainly cap the pricing power of uber in terms of well the the price per ride that they are able to charge which would which would um or will of course impact their profitability as well and then he also writes attempting to replicate Uber's capabilities is just really hard and and doesn't make much sense from an economic point of view and I think he's right about this um yeah I also wanted to highlight this article here from the guardian in which basically they highlight how in the UK specifically being an Uber writer is pretty hard it's no longer as lucrative from from a business point of view as it used to be in the past just to quote from the article um and there or here they are quoting one Uber writer who said well it has has reached a point where I can't do it anymore and he's considering leaving the job and later he said for some rights that rate can be less than one pound a mile including a holiday pay whereas pre previously it was often 3 pound a mile so that's one of the concerns you maybe should have as an Uber investor uh considering the different stakeholders in the Uber ecosystem that it seems like Riders aren't treated fairly and I'm not sure if that is going to be a problem for the business long term because I'm not sure how sustainable that is going to be that relationship between Uber and its writers are they going to look for alternatives are they going to S alternative right hailing platforms are they going to look for alternative jobs which might lead to problems I guess that is something we will have to re to wait and and see actually Amman not too long ago he was posting this very critical tweet of of uber on X so on the very same platform on which he now revealed that he is a a shareholder in Uber and he highlighted that Uber is I'm I'm quoting here massively increasing its margins and profits in New York City by ripping off its New York City cap drivers so sort of a similar point that was made in the guardian article and then finally just to get back to the last slide in which bman talks about some of the risks associated with an investment in Uber he highlights the AV threat so the risk of maybe our Mobility or the way we we move from A to B shifting to autonomous vehicle that is something I've also discussed in my initial video on Uber so I won't I recommend checking this video out next but Hees that he highlights that he thinks that transition is still many years away so he wrote a large scale us AV right share introduction is unlikely for many years however what I will say at say 27 times earnings well how many years you really need that shift to be away because assuming that Uber wouldn't be growing at all well it would take you 29 27 depending on the multiple that you arrive at say let's say Uber trades at a multiple of 27 time times earnings it would take you 27 times just for you to make your money back that's your payback period so to speak so obviously I'm simplifying things because Uber is growing but I don't know if we're going to have that transition in in some areas at least in the next 5 years for example well I'm not sure if if that is reflected in Uber's valuation and that is something you will have to to have a strong and hopefully right opinion on like I could definitely see a scenario in which AVS will be booked via Uber's platform at least partly so that could be a way to to counter that risk but that is something you have to think about as a potential Uber shareholder all right and that's already it for today's video let me know what you think of amman's uber purchase did it surprise you do you think he's right with his bet here and I'll talk to you in one of my next videos soon take care
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