A company cannot juice top line revenue with the full meal values like this as they report revenue to sell to investors and get ready to IPO. The revenue reported would need to be clearly a transaction revenue they get from facilitating the service between restaurants and hungry people.
troydavis' comment is correct. The full order values or GMV and Uber's separate cut of it (net revenue or transaction revenue) are both important numbers and both should be reported. But the total order value should not reported as a revenue.
Also, for anyone looking for a more professional writeup about Uber's valuation, while he famously got it wrong at first I still think Professor Damodaran is the best one writing about it. http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.in/2016/08/the-ride-sharing-...
A company cannot juice top line revenue with the full meal values like this as they report revenue to sell to investors and get ready to IPO. The revenue reported would need to be clearly a transaction revenue they get from facilitating the service between restaurants and hungry people.
troydavis' comment is correct. The full order values or GMV and Uber's separate cut of it (net revenue or transaction revenue) are both important numbers and both should be reported. But the total order value should not reported as a revenue.
A few years ago Groupon got in trouble for fishy accounting and had to restate earnings. http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/groupon-changes-its-r...
Also, for anyone looking for a more professional writeup about Uber's valuation, while he famously got it wrong at first I still think Professor Damodaran is the best one writing about it. http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.in/2016/08/the-ride-sharing-...