Uber is a good investment; at a $60 buy price it offers strong forward returns, and recent critical documentaries are flawed because they ignore Uber's detailed rebuttal.

Uber has received two different journalist outlets, both Business Insider and More Perfect Union, making hit pieces in video format. These are very well produced YouTube videos that are going viral, getting hundreds of thousands of views, and they are highly critical of Uber.

Now, while most people are against the big bad companies, they they don't like the billion-dollar companies, I'm here to offer a different perspective, and I'll be offering a little rebuttal and highlighting how this bit of journalism is not really journalism.

Now, finally, we get to my last holding, holding number 14, my smallest position, which is Uber. Now, I've actually invested more into Uber than I have into Door Dash. The reason that Door Dash is a bigger position, is simply because it's performed better.

It's just gone up more. So, I'm not less bullish on Uber. I've actually put more money into the stock. But regardless, most of these companies move up in the ranks and in the holding by growing and growing.

And so, I expect both of these companies to do that over time. Now, Uber is a 1.7% weight to position. It's a $25,000 position with $1,900 in the green. So, I feel like we're still getting started with this company.

And with Uber, I'm setting a lot less aggressive of a buy target. The buy price for this one is $60. If it's the first company to hit its buy price of $60, that will trigger it.

And that's only around 23% from its current price. Uber traded at $60 per share in late 2024. Based on what I believe are fairly conservative assumptions, if Uber really did hit $60 per share, I believe it has some of the best forward-looking returns.

For example, if we assume that earnings per share will grow at 16%. And then we assume it will trade at a 22 Ford PE ratio, that means that if we buy the stock at $60 per share, we'd get a 20.9 compounded annual return for the next 5 years.

So Uber looks like it would be one of the best opportunities at that buy target.

Now, moving on, we get to some news here and this is a story that I think is worth covering. Uber has been hit with two back-toback video presentations. These are documentary style, very slick, very persuasive videos.

One of them from the progressive activist group More Perfect Union and the other from Business Insider. Now, there are slight variations in the videos, but they basically cover the same thing.

They suggest that Uber is charging people too much. And the way that they're charging them, more importantly, is with personalized pricing, which is something that's like a dirty word today.

Personalized pricing means that you use information about someone, them specifically, their spending habits, their income, things about them, to charge them the maximum amount.

Now, there's another thing that's also being discussed today and it's becoming a more topical issue, which is dynamic pricing. Dynamic pricing isn't pricing specific to a person.

It's specific to a situation. Meaning, if a lot of people want to go to a concert and it has a lot of demand, they might dynamically raise the price of additional seats in the concert because they know there's just generally a lot of demand.

So, dynamic pricing is situational based. Personal pricing is persontoperson based. Most people don't have such an issue with dynamic pricing. It makes sense logically that things that have higher demand have higher prices, but nobody really likes personalized pricing.

Now, I want to look at some of these documentaries that are clearly against Uber. One of them is from a progressive activist group that does fund campaigns and they're actually real activists, which is more perfect union.

It's a YouTube video that says, "We investigated Uber again. It's worse than last time." Now, that sounds really bad. Let's go ahead and take a look at what they investigated and what they found.

Everything is expensive right now, but the ride you take to work, to the airport, home from the bar, that's climbing higher than almost anything. Uber CEO was asked where that money's going.

>> Well, I think it is about inflation. Our drivers need to make a living. >> And maybe he's right. So, check. Pull up a fair and do the math. The problem is you can't check. Since 2022, Uber uses an algorithm no one outside the company can see to set wages and fairs.

In 2024, I ran an experiment with seven drivers, different pay for the same rides. Uber said, "We got it wrong." Okay, so this is important. They have seven guys in a building here, and each of those guys like they they put down their phone, and they all try buying the same ride from the same place to the same destination, but they get different prices.

So, that to them is signaling. Business Insider takes that as a signaling that Uber is doing personalized pricing cuz it's the same building. It's the same destination and the prices are different.

So Uber must be looking at these individuals, some information about them and trying to extract different prices out of different uh different riders here. That seems really dirty.

That's really bad if Uber's doing that. And then for the next couple of seconds, they mention Uber's response >> drivers different pay for the same rides. Uber said, "We got it wrong."

>> Now I want to point this out. Uh this is again more perfect union. Uh it's this activist group that's supposed to be doing deep dives into this issue. They highlight the problem here that they think that Uber is doing personalized pricing.

When Uber responds, this is how they summarize Uber's response. They said Uber said they got it wrong. Now, this video continues on highly critical of Uber, asserting all sorts of allegations, saying that their pricing is a big blackbox, saying that they're basically accusing Uber of doing personalized pricing, trying to extract money out of people, and having a take rate that's much higher uh than what people think.

So, lots of allegations are being launched at Uber. Huge allegations of business misconduct trying to break trust between Uber and

really likes personalized pricing. Now, I want to look at some of these documentaries that are clearly against Uber. One of them is from a progressive activist group that does fund campaigns and they're actually real activists, which is more perfect union.

It's a YouTube video that says, "We investigated Uber again. It's worse than last time." Now, that sounds really bad. Let's go ahead and take a look at what they investigated and what they found.

Everything is expensive right now, but the ride you take to work, to the airport, home from the bar, that's climbing higher than almost anything. Uber CEO was asked where that money's going.

>> Well, I think it is about inflation. Our drivers need to make a living.

>> And maybe he's right. So, check. Pull up a fair and do the math. The problem is you can't check. Since 2022, Uber uses an algorithm no one outside the company can see to set wages and fairs.

In 2024, I ran an experiment with seven drivers, different pay for the same rides. Uber said, "We got it wrong." Okay, so this is important. They have seven guys in a building here, and each of those guys like they they put down their phone, and they all try buying the same ride from the same place to the same destination, but they get different prices.

So, that to them is signaling. Business Insider takes that as a signaling that Uber is doing personalized pricing cuz it's the same building. It's the same destination and the prices are different.

So Uber must be looking at these individuals, some information about them and trying to extract different prices out of different uh different riders here. That seems really dirty. That's really bad if Uber's doing that.

>> drivers different pay for the same rides. Uber said, "We got it wrong."

>> Now I want to point this out. Uh this is again more perfect union. Uh it's this activist group that's supposed to be doing deep dives into this issue. They highlight the problem here that they think that Uber is doing personalized pricing.

When Uber responds, this is how they summarize Uber's response. They said Uber said they got it wrong. Now, this video continues on highly critical of Uber, asserting all sorts of allegations, saying that their pricing is a big blackbox, saying that they're basically accusing Uber of doing personalized pricing, trying to extract money out of people, and having a take rate that's much higher uh than what people think.

So, lots of allegations are being launched at Uber. Huge allegations of business misconduct trying to break trust between Uber and their riders and their drivers. So, this is a very scathing review of Uber. It's a very skeptical look at the company.

But this isn't the first time that this has happened. In fact, this entire documentary by More Perfect Union. The whole thing is based on a report that's months old. A report that Uber has actually responded to.

Now, this is the report that they say right at the beginning, Uber says we got it wrong. The only issue is they never actually mention the report beyond that. They never actually look at Uber's response.

In fact, this entire video, the 20inut presentation, simply bashes Uber, alleges a bunch of things against them, and then doesn't even show Uber's response.

And we have people here in the comment section, like this individual saying, "This is what journalism should be." With 4,000 thumbs up. Let's take a look at the type of journalism they're doing here.

They make a 20-minute documentary alleging a bunch of things, a bunch of allegations at Uber. Uber takes the time to write a very technical, detailed response to all the allegations.

This isn't some public uh disclaimer. They didn't just say, "Oh, we think you got it wrong." No, Uber goes into specific technical nuance and detail about every single aspect that's being alleged to them.

And Uber doesn't just deny the allegations. They completely reject them and they show what they're actually doing, where the documentary has it wrong, and how their system actually works.

They explain it very simply but also in great technical detail. But More Perfect Union being an activist advocate group doesn't take the time to actually examine Uber's response.

And their audience never sees it. The people commenting on this video, the 1,800 comments, the people liking this comment saying this is what journalism should be, none of them have a clue what Uber even says.

They're all completely blind to the argument of the group they're even accusing. So this is not what journalism looks like. This is a one-sided activist campaign against Uber with massive omission bias.

Now, the other aspect of this is Business Insider, who ironically just at the same time released another video that's very similar to More Perfect Union. Now, to Business Insider's credit, they give slightly more rebuttal from Uber, but still not not much.

It is very much the same case where they show a slickly edited documentary accusing Uber of a bunch of things and then they don't take the full time to really explain Uber's response.

So, for example, let's just play the beginning of this one. These 11 people are calling an Uber X from our office in lower Manhattan to the Plaza Hotel. Same ride at the exact same time.

>> 6627. >> 64.96. Princess 54.95. What? That's >> Frub bricks per Uber at Cloud. >> The highest fair was nearly 21% more expensive than the lowest fair.

>> We're all just sitting in the same room and you're going to give different prices. Like, is there a reason they're getting more expensive one?

>> See, it's the exact same thing. In the More Perfect Union video, they gathered seven riders together. They put their phones on a table. They all called for Ubers. And the prices were different.

In this Business Insider one, they have all these people joined around a table. They call for the rides and the prices are different. Now, this individual right here, she asks, "What am I missing?"

Well, the answer to her question is yes. There is a reason that some people are getting more expensive rides than others. And you don't even have to do a lot of investigative journalism to get that reason.

You just have to read Uber's response, which gives a very objective and logical explanation.

Right here at the beginning of this report, Uber explains the nuance and why these people are being confused of getting different prices. The central flaw in this report is that it treats trips with the same pickup and drop off point as the same trip.

In reality, those are different trips. In an open dynamic market, a trip is defined not only by where it starts and ends, but when it is requested and the marketplace conditions at the moment.

Uber's pricing is marketplaced. fairs automatically update in real time based on objective factors like ride demand, the estimated time and distance of the trip, real-time traffic conditions, and the immediate availability of nearby drivers.

That all makes perfect sense. Uber has an algorithm that looks at all the factors on the street, all the things that are going on in a busy world with real assets moving around, and they have to update those things on the fly.

Now, in the case where you have these seven or eight people around a table and they're all hitting the button to buy a trip at the same time, you may believe that the conditions are perfectly similar, so they all should get the same price.

But that's not the case. If they're all requesting for drivers at the same time, there's a limited amount of drivers on the road, meaning one of them may be able to pick up one or two of them.

So the first two people that press the button may get the lower price and then the additional people pressing the button even a second later are routed to a different driver that's further away for him to get there to their location.

He needs to drive further. The price is going to be higher. The trip is going to take a little bit longer. There's not like an infinite amount of drivers all perfectly waiting situated at every corner.

So, it actually makes perfect sense that all of these people situated in real time hitting the button each at the same time are actually getting different prices because they're not hitting the button at the exact same time.

One of them is requesting a trip right before the other, right before the other. And Uber is seeing that there's a demand spike. So, Uber's instantaneously adjusting the price upwards because they know they're going to have to call in drivers from further away.

That is dynamic pricing. That is not personal pricing. And that's an important detail.

What you're seeing here is logically based dynamic pricing. Meaning that if Uber sees a big demand spike of a bunch of people trying to leave a building at the same time, the people that call for a request first will get lower prices.

The people that continue calling more and more and more from the same location will get higher prices as the drivers will be further away. But none of that is personalized to the person.

None of that is because Uber is looking at how much money someone makes or some some type of mysterious data about that person and then pricing it based on them. It's all based on these market conditions on the road.

In the official documents from Uber of which they are audited, they say to be clear, Uber does not engage in surveillance pricing. We do not personalize prices to individuals and we do not use protected characteristics, phone battery levels, phone models, or other devices or information to set prices.

User specific behavior attributes to customer segments also do not factor into prices. Uber's being very clear here. They don't use personalized pricing. That's not why these people are getting different prices. They reiterate over and over again.

Even if you try to replicate a duplicate trip, it's not really a duplicate trip. These are not the same trips. Consumer Reports treats trips with the same pickup and drop off as identical.

They're not. In a real-time marketplace, a trip is defined not only by where it stands and ends, but also when it's requested, the marketplace conditions, rider demand, driver abil driver availability, traffic routing, estimated trip length.

All of this changes within a literal second. The report's analysis therefore compares different ride requests made by different people under different conditions and not the same trip.

The core flaw underlines every finding in the report and shapes the headline numbers that follow.

Another thing that the More Perfect Union video said is just a matter of fact is that Uber's promotions are fictitious. They're just fake. And they said that with giving no rebuttal from Uber.

But Uber's already clearly rebutted that even before this video was published. Uber's promotional discounts are not fictitious. The methodology behind the claim about fictitious discount relies on another flawed assumption.

They decided arbitrarily that a trip can only be genuinely discounted if it's cheaper than the median price of a given route. But a route level median is not the correct reference price for a specific trip or request.

Trips with the same origin and destination can legitimately have different prices because of real time market conditions change.

So basically every accusation launched at Uber are in this makebelieve world where nothing changes on the road where you have the same amount of drivers, the same amount of traffic, the same amount of demand, the same amount of everything and Uber just decides to charge different amounts to hurt the customer. And that's not the situation at all.

Now, was any of this argued in Uber's videos, did they really read the replies? Did they really share the technical detail and breakdown and nuance from Uber's report? No. None of the people watching these videos from Business Insider or More Perfect Union have any clue about Uber's response.

They're just seeing the one-sided message from these activists. And as much as you want to try to call this journalism, it's just not. Journalism shows both sides. It can have an argument, it can have context, but it should show the rebuttal from the company.

This is narrative- driven documentaries trying to get you to believe something by omitting a lot of important data. So, I get the urge to be against the big bad billionaire companies, but that doesn't justify lying about them or completely omitting their rebuttals.