By Webster Tilton I’m not a gambler, but at this point even I have to take a serious look at getting in on what Uber has been up to. According to MarketWatch.com, their net sales are up 63% from this same time last year, and they’re expanding aggressively. Uber recently gotten into food delivery...

By Webster Tilton

I’m not a gambler, but at this point even I have to take a serious look at getting in on what Uber has been up to. According to MarketWatch.com, their net sales are up 63% from this same time last year, and they’re expanding aggressively.

Uber recently gotten into food delivery and bike-sharing, both of which have improved their already impressive margin even more. They sold off their Russian and southeast Asian operations to focus on more promising markets in India and the Middle East. They’ve acquired the bike-share company Jump Bikes and they’ve invested in a scooter company called Lime.

UBER CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that he plans to take the company public in the second half of 2019. This may have been what prompted several major investment firms, such as Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital and TPG Capital, to buy over $400 million worth of Uber stock at $40 per share back in May of this year.

Of course it isn’t all good news. All of these investments that Uber is making cost a huge amount of money, which depletes their war chest. They’re taking a calculated risk and there’s always the chance that it won’t pay off. They’ve spent so much money that, if not for the cash generated by selling off the Russian and southeast Asian operations, they would have actually posted a loss this year. But this looks to be a solid a rock as anything can be, and in the end we all have to either risk our money, or live purely off of cash savings.

Uber is expanding at an exponential rate. Their stocks aren’t publicly available yet but when that changes (in Q3 2019 if all goes according to plan) we might very well find ourselves wishing that we had taken that chance.