The CAB result wasn't so bad. I think that the regulators sparing the radio network has worked to CAB's advantage in a big way. It's been pretty well worked over in the last few months. It's still too pricey for me to buy, but it's around fair value, or my judgement of it anyway.
I don't really know why they still persist with the bus thing. Surely that cash is better in the hands of shareholders.
I think the market has seriously over estimated the impact of things like Uber, the cash burn is astronomical at Uber, I know its funded by Google, but there must be some finite limit to the amount of money they are prepared to lose - and all the while CAB is continuing to make a healthy profit.
I don't really know why they still persist with the bus thing. Surely that cash is better in the hands of shareholders.
I think the market has seriously over estimated the impact of things like Uber.
Seriously Uber is convenience but if they play the same rule as Cabbie they aren't cheap, they talking about Cabbie has the protection but Uber is the one that has the unfair advantage doing dodgy stuff.
Its called disruptive technology.
I work in the technology startup field. I have a lot of experience in this stuff, yes tooting my own horn on that.
Uber is not disruptive technology. There is nothing disruptive about its technology!
Uber is nothing more than a regulatory arbitrage firm (which is exactly what ROE said). Just like Airbnb and the other idiot startups that idiots call "the sharing economy". They are also corporate scum of the worst order. I'd never invest, even if I had a time machine that showed me that all Uber investors become billionaires in 1 year time.
Uber is not disruptive technology. There is nothing disruptive about its technology!
Care to elaborate?
They've steamrolled any and all opposition encountered so far.
Seriously Uber is convenience but if they play the same rule as Cabbie they aren't cheap, they talking about Cabbie
has the protection but Uber is the one that has the unfair advantage doing dodgy stuff.
OK fair enough - Disruptive innovation then,
In neither case does steamrolling opposition constitute evidence to the contrary. Consumers are flocking to the service now, specifically because the business model has been tuned to do exactly that. They are happy to get you trapped into the service (because where will you go after the competition is dead) before worrying about asking you to pay what it really costs (hint: the delta is almost entirely in regulatory compliance).This is exactly the kind of Silicon Valley business model that geeks like Richard Stallman have been railing against for 30+y and people are only just starting to wake up to now.
Of course, you did say 'almost', and you certainly know more than me on the issue, so I won't argue anymore
I agree with the most part of your post - but I don't fully agree with the bold section in the quote above.
I believe that CAB pay a commission to the taxi 'group' (I don't know the official term) to keep them using the CAB POS terminals. Now that the 10% has been reduced to 5%, I'm almost certain it has been reduced, but there's still some fat to be cut there.
If you add to that the cost of taxi licenses (which did not reflect the cost of regulation) it again introduced extra fat into the system. If they cut this right back, then yes, it's purely regulatory arbitrage.
Of course, you did say 'almost', and you certainly know more than me on the issue, so I won't argue anymore
C'mon guys
The threat to CAB is not from UberX it's from people being able to completely circumvent CAB's in taxi payment system. GoCatch/Uber/Ingogo/Lyft, they all allow users to pay for taxis without using an in-taxi payment service. It's unlikely the payment system will ever have a zero value, but you can't be so dimissive of the alternatives that currently offer something that CAB does not (which in itself shows just how poorly CAB have dealth with this competition). That's why I think not taking Fels' recommendation to remove compulsory membership of a radio network has done CAB a HUGE favour; it's given them a $100m/year revenue buffer.
Forget UberX, the real money is in how people pay for their taxi. AFAIK, goCatch is the most popular taxi app in Australia.
Current Uber valuation: $50bn
Current Amazon valuation: $209bn (Amazon Web Services literally changed the entire game)
Current Netflix valuation: $39bn (and guess what Netflix is hella innovative and disruptive! their work with microservices and stuff like ChaosMonkey is true gold)
Current IBM valuation: $137bn
Current HPQ valuation: $46.5bn
CAB will probably still make money for some years... but it's been taking way too big a clip on services that have simple substitutes now.
Forget UberX, the real money is in how people pay for their taxi. AFAIK, goCatch is the most popular taxi app in Australia.
As we say on the internet: forgive my lulz.
Australians, next time you're on Uber, ask yourself (or the driver):
* Is this human making minimum wage?
* Is this human protected from working crazy hours?
* Is this human forced to act with my safety and interest in mind, as the consumer?
* Is my fare going back into the Australian economy to pay for Medicare and Education, or is it going to Silicon Valley to repay Venture Capitalists?
and so on...
ACCC has released draft ruling denying iHail authorisation to launch. The gist of the reasoning is that other players in this space are having to recruit taxis to their app but ihail would, because of who owns it, enter the market as the dominant app, not through competition.
It seems like the ACCC is taking the view that this new app is really just an extension of CAB's in-car payment system and will lead to the same competition outcomes.
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