S<\/span>AN FRANCISCO (Reuters) –<\/strong> Uber Technologies Inc will continue to lose money in its home market for at least the next six months as rival Lyft Inc poses a fierce competitive challenge, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said on Thursday in his first public comments since taking the top job at Uber two months ago.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe U.S. is very, very competitive right now between us and Lyft, so I don\u2019t see the U.S. as being a particularly profitable market for the next six months,\u201d said Khosrowshahi, who made the comments at the New York Times DealBook conference in New York, which was also streamed online.<\/span><\/p>\n A spokesman confirmed that Uber will be unprofitable overall, although some cities may break even.<\/p>\n Khosrowshahi was tapped to run Uber in August after leading travel-booking site Expedia Inc for 12 years and is expected to bring a less abrasive approach than his predecessor, Travis Kalanick. On Thursday, he described progress in talks with regulators in London, who in September refused to renew Uber\u2019s operating license.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Uber has often said its heavy losses were necessary to establish itself in new markets. But the lack of profits in its home market, where it has been operating for eight years, and others such as Southeast Asia, raise questions about the company\u2019s business model, which relies on heavily subsidizing both riders and drivers to keep prices low using the billions of dollars in venture capital the company has raised.<\/span><\/p>\n Khosrowshahi\u2019s comments are also a testament to Lyft\u2019s growth. The smaller ride service, which started in 2012 and only operates in the United States, has expanded to more than 350 cities across 41 states this year and last month raised $1 billion in a financing round led by Alphabet Inc.<\/span><\/p>\n For a brief period last year, Uber was profitable in the United States and Canada, the company said.<\/span><\/p>\n Khosrowshahi outlined the challenges in Southeast Asia, where Uber has had to spend heavily to compete with local ride services Ola and Grab.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe economics of that market <\/span>are not what we want them to be,\u201d Khosrowshahi said. \u201cI think it\u2019s over-capitalized at this point. We\u2019re going in, and we\u2019re leaning forward. But I\u2018m not optimistic that market is going to be profitable anytime soon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But he dismissed the prospect of further consolidation similar to the merger deals Uber struck with competitors in China and Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n Follow us on TWITTER for more Logistics News<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Follow us on FACEBOOK for more Logistics News<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n In Britain and Brazil, prospects are brightening. Khosrowshahi said that he held productive talks with London\u2019s regulators, who have deemed Uber \u201cunfit\u201d to run a taxi service in the city, where Uber has some 40,000 drivers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe were guilty of not communicating,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we were generally immature in how we deal and dealt with regulators.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He added that Uber staff was working to accommodate the \u201cperfectly reasonable asks\u201d from Transport for London, the taxi regulating body.<\/span><\/p>\n Khosrowshahi was also upbeat about Brazil, where Uber has joined forces with other ride-services companies to block regulations. The Senate last week voted to scrap parts of a bill, now to be taken up by the House, that would have effectively turned the companies into regular taxi services.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Competition getting tough between Uber and Lyft SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Uber Technologies Inc will continue to lose money in its home market for at least the next six months as rival Lyft Inc poses a fierce competitive challenge, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said on Thursday in his first public comments since taking the top…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6350,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6347\/revisions\/6350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/moovafrica.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/Uber-boss-300x189.jpg\")