I feel like I’ve been reading about the demise of Uber ever since they graduated from startup darling to media bad guy, yet somehow they continue to operate.
This author has an axe to grind with Uber for some reason and they’re pulling out all of the old tropes about misunderstanding growing startups. No, Uber is not going to disappear soon when they run out of money. They’re going to gradually adjust their business model to focus on profitability instead of using their investment money to expand and grow. The entire purpose of investment money is to expand and grow, even at a loss. It’s not some unique bug that Uber isn’t yet profitable. That was the plan, and to be completely honest Uber has been executing their growth plans quite well.
That might be, but your counter argument is not showing that you seriously engage with the most common criticism (including in this article), which is that there is no sane business model for them to adjust towards.
It's not that they are losing money now, it's that subsidizing rides to be below cost is the only real differentiator they have.
Their only apparent endgame is being able to monopolize the market and then extract rents further down the line. And that's something that needs to be called out over and over again so lawmakers and regulators don't enable them.
> This author has an axe to grind with Uber for some reason and they’re pulling out all of the old tropes about misunderstanding growing startups. No, Uber is not going to disappear soon when they run out of money.
By definition, yes, Uber will disappear when they run out of money. The money is what keeps them there. People have been foretelling the end of uber for quite some time because the trajectory hasn't changed. They're losing billions every year. What's unique about now is that they're running out of billions to lose. It'll still be a few years before that happens.
> They’re going to gradually adjust their business model to focus on profitability instead of using their investment money to expand and grow.
This is pretty much impossible without a fundamental change in what the service is and who the target market is. Are you so confident that they'll be able to do this? And what if they fail to adapt? If they scale back to only profitable urban areas, at high prices, running trips between the airport and back, for a tiny fraction of their original goals, are they really the same company they were before?
> The entire purpose of investment money is to expand and grow, even at a loss. It’s not some unique bug that Uber isn’t yet profitable.
Everything is relative. They're losing a couple billion per year. Would you say this if they were losing ten billion per year? 100 billion per year? 100 trillion per year? The reality is that the very start of that line is a lot of money being lost for very low prospects of eventual profit.
> That was the plan, and to be completely honest Uber has been executing their growth plans quite well.
They really have not. They've had to withdraw from several countries because it wasn't working. To me it feels they've greatly overextended.
tl;dr
uber has $7.7B in current assets. They had $9.8B at the start of the year.
If you somehow removed 100% of their r&d costs and 100% of their general overhead costs, they would still be losing hundreds of millions of dollars in the past six months. Their financials are tricky to interpret, because so much of their real costs are hidden in "sales & marketing". It makes it look like their gross margin on rides is healthy but they need to shave overhead. The reality is that keeping their head above the water in terms of driver supply on the gig model is extremely expensive.
> I feel like I’ve been reading about the demise of Uber ever since they graduated from startup darling to media bad guy, yet somehow they continue to operate.
That's easy enough to explain: Billions of dollars in the capital markets chasing ever-diminishing returns. But that music will stop eventually... at some point they won't be able to borrow money at vanishingly low interest rates, and their stock price won't bear raising capital in the public markets.
At that point, unless Uber has massive costs in other areas that they can cut, they'll have to stop subsidizing rides, which means either continuing to cut fees to drivers which will further depress the supply side of their market, or jacking up rates, which will hurt the demand side.
In both cases, there's an interplay--if the supply side drops off, wait times will go up and you'll have fewer riders. If the demand side drops off, you'll have fewer opportunities for drivers to make money so they'll leave the system. The result is a death spiral.
Oh come on! This is either trolling or you just didn’t think more than 30 seconds after reading the word “sick.” You don’t even know what this person’s ailment is, but you jumped straight to them being an infectious person. Being able to work a 9-5 shift is not the same as being healthy enough to see other people.
How can a startup operating what is essentially a marketplace (Uber doesn't directly employ the driveres nor owns their cars) get a 20% cut on every transaction and still lose money?
Costs a lot to keep the supply of drivers there. Consumers don't want to pay prices high enough to justify the gig model. Overhead is fairly high due to many failed attempts at growth and legal and tech and what not.
> (drivers were already losing money at this point, but Uber relied on their unfamiliarity with capital depreciation calculations to hide this).
If you do the math on the fully loaded cost to purchase, insure, maintain, fuel and park a late model sedan in a major city, relative to how quickly taxi-like usage wears out a car, the Uber drivers are often working for barely above minimum wage.
Their business model (and that of Lyft) relies upon there being a large pool of people who for whatever reason own a rapidly depreciating $25-30,000 asset such as a Toyota Camry, and will consume its lifespan/wear it out to make what looks like a decent hourly wage. But it's not.
If I was the CEO, instead of thinking i could pull off self-driving cars, I would have gone with some lease/buy/discount program with Tesla and Model 3s - incentivizing an electric fleet as much as possible.
I would have boosted the charging station capacity or invested in quick charger convenience areas.
I would have also invested in partnering quick quickbooks, to have accounting/expense tracking built in or stupid easy.
depreciating assets are normal, but leaving the world to fend for themselves on how to write that expense off was their big problem IMHO
They did have a lease/buy program. It was demonstrably worse than just leasing a vehicle directly (Uber would take a cut) and there were ugly questions around what happened if you stopped driving for Uber.
Uber does have partnership programs where drivers can rent a vehicle with maintenance and insurance included. So the driver basically only pays for fuel. I don't know how that works out in terms of hourly wages.
I have long been suspecious that being an Uber driver makes sense if you can do it as an extra job and only do it on friday and saturday nights and in crappy weather.
You are putting the same wear on the car, but the prices are much higher.
Reposting for a well composted comment from Alex DeLarge for visibility and to add to the conversation:
> Here is a quick response on science and fiction parts as a follow up to my previous comment. I am not sure if I want to spend a lot of time on this one-sided, brand-bashing article to point out all the misinformation or truth hiding. Believe me when I say I come up with an immediate counter argument in a second when I read a paragraph in this piece.
> Unfortunately, I do have better things to do and hoping below should suffice.
> The science-fiction writer here understands the average reader’s quirks and their unwillingness to dig through all the “sources” cited here so he just hand-picked some data that works for the narrative.
> Hey, don’t get me wrong - I do agree it works pretty well for the aimed narrative.
> SCIENCE
> “Uber’s time is up.”
> Nope. It is not. Dull claim requires a dull answer but I’ll do you one better. Uber just raised $1.5B in senior notes due 2029. In plain language, this means that Uber is capable of raising money when it needs because there are investors out there who did their due diligence and concluded Uber will be good for its word.
> “Uber loses a lot of money. A lot of money. Billions. But it claims it’s making money. How does it do this? It lies. Uber eschews boring old generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and invents fanciful new forms of mathematics where losing money is good, actually.
> Every quarter, it releases new lies laid out like a profit-and-loss statement, and every quarter, Horan shows it’s losing money. Here he is on the company’s $6.8 billion (with a B!) loss last summer, predicting the company would be broke by mid-2021.
> It’s mid-2021. Uber is going broke.
> Yesterday, Horan published his 26th (!) analysis of Uber, breaking down its Q2–21 financials.”
> Yes, let’s address the financial elephant in the room. Adjusted EBITDA! What a fancy name, eh? Basically, all it does is to remove certain items from the profitabilty calculation as those are, well, called one time for a good reason. It is for investors/analysts so they are able to make good comparisons and educated decisions in the same industry. It is not to lie to those people who will never read their financial statements. This calculation is never meant for those people.
> Another misinformation is Uber avoiding using GAAP. Just go ahead and take a look at their last filing and tell me how they are avoiding using GAAP as it is required by law to publish results in GAAP.
> It is way past mid-2021 and Uber is not broke. I still see tons of cash ($4.4B) in their balance sheet and already shown their ability to raise money. It is going to be a bit cheesy but if Horan (who?) was right then he would not need 26 (!) analyses to prove it. One would suffice.
> “Uber increased road congestion.”
> From your source article: “And it’s always worth remembering, as transportation professionals say again and again, that congestion can be a sign that your city is thriving. “Congestion arises because we have people, and people go out and do things and they have jobs,” says Castiglione. Fighting congestion is good. But expecting traffic to disappear—or blaming it all on one or two players—isn’t realistic.”
> “Uber was never going to be profitable. Never.”
> I cannot decide if this is part is getting the science wrong or all together fiction so I guess it is a bit of both.
> Here is another one. FB was never going to be profitable. Never. Until one day it was. (FB founded in 2004, turned cash flow positive in 2009 and IPO’ed in 2012). I’ll prescribe Business 101 so you understand why companies are formed. Hint: It is related with profits.
> Uber in its last filing (2Q21) shows its revenue progress from its worst quarter (hello Covid19) to its current. It goes like this: $1.9B -> $2.8B -> $3.1B -> $2.9B -> $3.9B
> Nope. It is not. Dull claim requires a dull answer but I’ll do you one better. Uber just raised $1.5B in senior notes due 2029. In plain language, this means that Uber is capable of raising money when it needs because there are investors out there who did their due diligence and concluded Uber will be good for its word.
$1.5B is less than 6 months of operating costs for Uber. This comment also excludes any information on the interest rate of the debt being raised here. Is it a low interest debt because the lenders have confidence in the company? Is it a high interest predatory loan because Uber is desperate and needs cash? The fact that someone can get a long term note is, on its own, not useful information at all.
Even within that defense of Uber is the fact that the company has gone from 6.8B to 4.4B in one year, despite a 1.5B infusion. That... doesn't seem great.
If the pushback is that Uber isn't at zero yet, yes, that's true. So mid-2021 was clearly premature. ("The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent") And yes, their revenue is growing. If only revenue were profits!
These seem like reasonable arguments, but currently UBER is worth $75 Billion. Wall St. can read earnings reports as well as Doctorow, and can ignore adjusted EBITDA in favor of GAAP if they want. So what's Doctorow's theory for why UBER is still worth a lot of money? Is it just that they're especially skilled at bamboozling?
Same reason why WeWork, AMC, Lyft, even Tesla continue to raise money.
2% interest rates on a 30-year, and terrible valuation on all other stocks. Most S&P500 stocks are well over 20 PE ratio now and pushing 30 PE. When all other investments look like crap, it is only natural to invest into other crap in hopes of winning big.
There's also a contingent of investors who are willing to throw $Billions into GME in the hopes that GME turns itself into a dominant online marketplace. Others are throwing money into NFTs and initial-coin offerings.
The amount of people throwing away good money at risky offerings is at an all time high. Under these conditions, Uber, Lyft, Tesla seem capable of eternally raising money from the markets.
-----------
I don't know when or how this behavior stops. I assume people will run out of money eventually, but I've been waiting since 2015 or so. It will happen when it happens, no point trying to predict the exact moment.
This comment has been made before, but here in NYC the Uber prices lately are just ridiculous at this point. Saturday night I was thinking of meeting some friends in Park Slope, and the Uber quote was $72 (I'm in Williamsburg). This was a ride that pre-Uber I could just call Areceibo or Northside car services, get a car at my door in 5 minutes, and it would cost around $20.
The weekend prior I was at a friend's art opening at south street seaport and the Uber home was $50+, something I in the past could just put my hand up on the street and hail a yellow cab for at least half that price. Not that it was perfect before -- they'd often stop, roll down the window, and if they didn't like where you'd be going they'd take off -- but now I feel like yellow cabs don't even stop for you anymore.
Took the subway instead, it was $2.75.
Edit to also say: I was just having memories of all the great music I'd hear in NYC cabs back in the day. Everyone is from everywhere here, so you'd hear music from all over the world when someone picked you up. Salsa, cumbia, bollywood, ghazals, high life, etc etc. After Uber everyone just plays generic American pop music, so as to not offend their millennial American passengers and get a bad rating (or as a friend would say, SV just makes apps to snitch on people). I once found out a driver was from the same town in Algeria that my father grew up in because he was playing Chaabi music. Miss when things weren't so sterile.
> the Uber quote was $72 (I'm in Williamsburg). This was a ride that pre-Uber I could just call Areceibo or Northside car services, get a car at my door in 5 minutes, and it would cost around $20.
Not disputing, just curious ...
How much would that ride from those two services cost today?
It's a perfectly reasonable question, but I'm actually unsure since I haven't called them in years. The one thing they do advertise are their airport rates, which Northside says is $42 to JFK from Williamsburg. Earlier this summer I had to fly, hadn't really noticed yet that Uber/Lyft prices have gotten absurd, and because I was running late took a $100 Lyft to the airport. I just checked Uber right now and it is saying $73. I'll definitely be reverting back to just using the local car company for airport rides in the future (but let's not get me started on how absurd it is NYC has no easy, fast public transit to the airports).
I've re-downloaded the Curb app and started hailing yellow cabs again.
I think it's a combo of the heat and the tourists coming back; I took a Lyft at 8AM a few days ago from uptown to downtown for $18 + tip, and an hour later the same route back up was priced at $45. I hailed a cab and got back for $22.
They still play music if you ask when you're getting in :) "hey what were you listening to"
> That way the company’s Saudi owners could raise investment capital from subsequent “investors” (AKA “suckers”) all the way up to the IPO, cash out, and walk away, whistling innocently.
The rest of the article is debatable but reasonably well-supported with links, but not the thesis. It should be straightforward to link to the SEC Form 4s and other public records showing the pre-IPO investors sold off their significant stakes. Even granting all of the facts below, if this didn't happen, it implies the investors were incompetent rather than malicious.
(I don't mean to imply they did or didn't sell off; I don't know much about Uber's financials. It's just weird to me that an essential point of this argument didn't get easy research.)
Since I could only find one mention of the word taxi in the article, can someone in the comments explain to me the specifics of how taxi companies can be profitable (both in cities with and without medallions) whereas Uber can't?
Much has been written about this already, but taxi companies are controlling access to a limited resource (taxi medallions), so the economics are slightly different. Uber sidestepped medallions by ignoring all existing laws at the beginning, and used investor billions to undercut taxi companies on price, but investor billions eventually run out.
The medallion system, good and bad, is how taxi companies have made things work in the past, and probably the future.
I thought it was kind of funny that the author said Taxi companies are only one app away from feature parity with Uber. That is a pretty important feature that they aren't likely to develop quickly if they haven't been bothered to do it already. Not a fan of uber, but the taxi experience is pretty unreliable and bad and will get worse if uber fails and taxis have another monopoly.
42 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 84.0 ms ] threadThis author has an axe to grind with Uber for some reason and they’re pulling out all of the old tropes about misunderstanding growing startups. No, Uber is not going to disappear soon when they run out of money. They’re going to gradually adjust their business model to focus on profitability instead of using their investment money to expand and grow. The entire purpose of investment money is to expand and grow, even at a loss. It’s not some unique bug that Uber isn’t yet profitable. That was the plan, and to be completely honest Uber has been executing their growth plans quite well.
It's not that they are losing money now, it's that subsidizing rides to be below cost is the only real differentiator they have.
Their only apparent endgame is being able to monopolize the market and then extract rents further down the line. And that's something that needs to be called out over and over again so lawmakers and regulators don't enable them.
By definition, yes, Uber will disappear when they run out of money. The money is what keeps them there. People have been foretelling the end of uber for quite some time because the trajectory hasn't changed. They're losing billions every year. What's unique about now is that they're running out of billions to lose. It'll still be a few years before that happens.
> They’re going to gradually adjust their business model to focus on profitability instead of using their investment money to expand and grow.
This is pretty much impossible without a fundamental change in what the service is and who the target market is. Are you so confident that they'll be able to do this? And what if they fail to adapt? If they scale back to only profitable urban areas, at high prices, running trips between the airport and back, for a tiny fraction of their original goals, are they really the same company they were before?
> The entire purpose of investment money is to expand and grow, even at a loss. It’s not some unique bug that Uber isn’t yet profitable.
Everything is relative. They're losing a couple billion per year. Would you say this if they were losing ten billion per year? 100 billion per year? 100 trillion per year? The reality is that the very start of that line is a lot of money being lost for very low prospects of eventual profit.
> That was the plan, and to be completely honest Uber has been executing their growth plans quite well.
They really have not. They've had to withdraw from several countries because it wasn't working. To me it feels they've greatly overextended.
tl;dr
uber has $7.7B in current assets. They had $9.8B at the start of the year.
If you somehow removed 100% of their r&d costs and 100% of their general overhead costs, they would still be losing hundreds of millions of dollars in the past six months. Their financials are tricky to interpret, because so much of their real costs are hidden in "sales & marketing". It makes it look like their gross margin on rides is healthy but they need to shave overhead. The reality is that keeping their head above the water in terms of driver supply on the gig model is extremely expensive.
That's easy enough to explain: Billions of dollars in the capital markets chasing ever-diminishing returns. But that music will stop eventually... at some point they won't be able to borrow money at vanishingly low interest rates, and their stock price won't bear raising capital in the public markets.
At that point, unless Uber has massive costs in other areas that they can cut, they'll have to stop subsidizing rides, which means either continuing to cut fees to drivers which will further depress the supply side of their market, or jacking up rates, which will hurt the demand side.
In both cases, there's an interplay--if the supply side drops off, wait times will go up and you'll have fewer riders. If the demand side drops off, you'll have fewer opportunities for drivers to make money so they'll leave the system. The result is a death spiral.
Exactly. While it make be very difficult to pinpoint exactly when a Ponzi scheme will blow up, it's not hard to figure out that it will blow up.
If you were too sick to go into an office, you were too sick to drive.
If you do the math on the fully loaded cost to purchase, insure, maintain, fuel and park a late model sedan in a major city, relative to how quickly taxi-like usage wears out a car, the Uber drivers are often working for barely above minimum wage.
Their business model (and that of Lyft) relies upon there being a large pool of people who for whatever reason own a rapidly depreciating $25-30,000 asset such as a Toyota Camry, and will consume its lifespan/wear it out to make what looks like a decent hourly wage. But it's not.
I would have boosted the charging station capacity or invested in quick charger convenience areas.
I would have also invested in partnering quick quickbooks, to have accounting/expense tracking built in or stupid easy.
depreciating assets are normal, but leaving the world to fend for themselves on how to write that expense off was their big problem IMHO
https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/hertz/
Or, a little less than $14,000/year before fuel costs. I do wonder how much extra those taxes, fees, and "additional charges" add up to though.
You are putting the same wear on the car, but the prices are much higher.
> Here is a quick response on science and fiction parts as a follow up to my previous comment. I am not sure if I want to spend a lot of time on this one-sided, brand-bashing article to point out all the misinformation or truth hiding. Believe me when I say I come up with an immediate counter argument in a second when I read a paragraph in this piece.
> Unfortunately, I do have better things to do and hoping below should suffice.
> The science-fiction writer here understands the average reader’s quirks and their unwillingness to dig through all the “sources” cited here so he just hand-picked some data that works for the narrative.
> Hey, don’t get me wrong - I do agree it works pretty well for the aimed narrative.
> SCIENCE
> “Uber’s time is up.”
> Nope. It is not. Dull claim requires a dull answer but I’ll do you one better. Uber just raised $1.5B in senior notes due 2029. In plain language, this means that Uber is capable of raising money when it needs because there are investors out there who did their due diligence and concluded Uber will be good for its word.
> “Uber loses a lot of money. A lot of money. Billions. But it claims it’s making money. How does it do this? It lies. Uber eschews boring old generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and invents fanciful new forms of mathematics where losing money is good, actually.
> Every quarter, it releases new lies laid out like a profit-and-loss statement, and every quarter, Horan shows it’s losing money. Here he is on the company’s $6.8 billion (with a B!) loss last summer, predicting the company would be broke by mid-2021.
> It’s mid-2021. Uber is going broke.
> Yesterday, Horan published his 26th (!) analysis of Uber, breaking down its Q2–21 financials.”
> Yes, let’s address the financial elephant in the room. Adjusted EBITDA! What a fancy name, eh? Basically, all it does is to remove certain items from the profitabilty calculation as those are, well, called one time for a good reason. It is for investors/analysts so they are able to make good comparisons and educated decisions in the same industry. It is not to lie to those people who will never read their financial statements. This calculation is never meant for those people.
> Another misinformation is Uber avoiding using GAAP. Just go ahead and take a look at their last filing and tell me how they are avoiding using GAAP as it is required by law to publish results in GAAP.
> It is way past mid-2021 and Uber is not broke. I still see tons of cash ($4.4B) in their balance sheet and already shown their ability to raise money. It is going to be a bit cheesy but if Horan (who?) was right then he would not need 26 (!) analyses to prove it. One would suffice.
> “Uber increased road congestion.”
> From your source article: “And it’s always worth remembering, as transportation professionals say again and again, that congestion can be a sign that your city is thriving. “Congestion arises because we have people, and people go out and do things and they have jobs,” says Castiglione. Fighting congestion is good. But expecting traffic to disappear—or blaming it all on one or two players—isn’t realistic.”
> “Uber was never going to be profitable. Never.”
> I cannot decide if this is part is getting the science wrong or all together fiction so I guess it is a bit of both.
> Here is another one. FB was never going to be profitable. Never. Until one day it was. (FB founded in 2004, turned cash flow positive in 2009 and IPO’ed in 2012). I’ll prescribe Business 101 so you understand why companies are formed. Hint: It is related with profits.
> Uber in its last filing (2Q21) shows its revenue progress from its worst quarter (hello Covid19) to its current. It goes like this: $1.9B -> $2.8B -> $3.1B -> $2.9B -> $3.9B
> (I will not bother myself t...
edit but I do want to address this point:
> Nope. It is not. Dull claim requires a dull answer but I’ll do you one better. Uber just raised $1.5B in senior notes due 2029. In plain language, this means that Uber is capable of raising money when it needs because there are investors out there who did their due diligence and concluded Uber will be good for its word.
$1.5B is less than 6 months of operating costs for Uber. This comment also excludes any information on the interest rate of the debt being raised here. Is it a low interest debt because the lenders have confidence in the company? Is it a high interest predatory loan because Uber is desperate and needs cash? The fact that someone can get a long term note is, on its own, not useful information at all.
If the pushback is that Uber isn't at zero yet, yes, that's true. So mid-2021 was clearly premature. ("The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent") And yes, their revenue is growing. If only revenue were profits!
Indeed.
2% interest rates on a 30-year, and terrible valuation on all other stocks. Most S&P500 stocks are well over 20 PE ratio now and pushing 30 PE. When all other investments look like crap, it is only natural to invest into other crap in hopes of winning big.
There's also a contingent of investors who are willing to throw $Billions into GME in the hopes that GME turns itself into a dominant online marketplace. Others are throwing money into NFTs and initial-coin offerings.
The amount of people throwing away good money at risky offerings is at an all time high. Under these conditions, Uber, Lyft, Tesla seem capable of eternally raising money from the markets.
-----------
I don't know when or how this behavior stops. I assume people will run out of money eventually, but I've been waiting since 2015 or so. It will happen when it happens, no point trying to predict the exact moment.
The weekend prior I was at a friend's art opening at south street seaport and the Uber home was $50+, something I in the past could just put my hand up on the street and hail a yellow cab for at least half that price. Not that it was perfect before -- they'd often stop, roll down the window, and if they didn't like where you'd be going they'd take off -- but now I feel like yellow cabs don't even stop for you anymore.
Took the subway instead, it was $2.75.
Edit to also say: I was just having memories of all the great music I'd hear in NYC cabs back in the day. Everyone is from everywhere here, so you'd hear music from all over the world when someone picked you up. Salsa, cumbia, bollywood, ghazals, high life, etc etc. After Uber everyone just plays generic American pop music, so as to not offend their millennial American passengers and get a bad rating (or as a friend would say, SV just makes apps to snitch on people). I once found out a driver was from the same town in Algeria that my father grew up in because he was playing Chaabi music. Miss when things weren't so sterile.
Love that line. I'm filing it away for future use :)
Not disputing, just curious ...
How much would that ride from those two services cost today?
I think it's a combo of the heat and the tourists coming back; I took a Lyft at 8AM a few days ago from uptown to downtown for $18 + tip, and an hour later the same route back up was priced at $45. I hailed a cab and got back for $22.
They still play music if you ask when you're getting in :) "hey what were you listening to"
So at least here Uber is very competitive.
The rest of the article is debatable but reasonably well-supported with links, but not the thesis. It should be straightforward to link to the SEC Form 4s and other public records showing the pre-IPO investors sold off their significant stakes. Even granting all of the facts below, if this didn't happen, it implies the investors were incompetent rather than malicious.
(I don't mean to imply they did or didn't sell off; I don't know much about Uber's financials. It's just weird to me that an essential point of this argument didn't get easy research.)
Uber must have huge overhead in HR/PR/Legal. They are trying to win the whole capitalism, and at that scale costs a lot.
The medallion system, good and bad, is how taxi companies have made things work in the past, and probably the future.