Economic Impact of U.S.-Iran Hostilities

Geoffrey Heal, Bernstein Faculty Leader

January 6, 2020

The big issue here is whether Iran and its proxies will attack Saudi Arabian refineries again - as they did quite recently - or whether they will try to block oil tankers from passing through the Straits of Hormuz. The US has significant naval presence in the straits but it would still be easy for Iran to reduce the flow of oil out from the Gulf. In either event we could see a spike in oil prices up into the $80 range, probably not for long. Even without such events we will see a risk premium built into the price of oil as long as there is heightened uncertainty. This is good news for US frackers, who have been hurting financially recently and struggling under large debt burdens. A few extra dollars on the price will be very positive for them. 

 

Of course a real war between the US and Iran, with heavy US attacks on Iran, would really close the area to business and send the price of oil up even higher than $80 - possibly towards $100. In any event, the US will be exposed to these higher prices so this will affect US consumers, but there will be no oil shortages in the US. 

Assessment of Lyft’s IPO Filing

Len Sherman, Adjunct Professor of Business

March 19, 2019

1. Analyzing Lyft’s plans provides no convincing evidence that the company is on a credible path to profitability. Lyft’s year-on-year operating losses grew by 38% in 2018 to $978 million. The company indicates that it is still growing rapidly, with the vague notion that greater scale will allow greater efficiencies, but it neither articulates what those efficiencies are, nor references why it can become profitable when Uber can’t, despite 5X greater scale.

2. The root cause of Lyft’s continued heavy losses remains the structural weaknesses in its ridesharing business model. All ridesharing companies face bounded demand and supply, undifferentiated service, low barriers to entry, low customer and driver switching costs, high variable costs, virtually no economies of scale, limited network effects and considerable regulatory and legal risk. As a result, no major global ridesharing companies have been able to achieve profitability, including those with dominant (>70%) market share leadership in their core markets.

3. Looking forward, Lyft’s path to profitability will be severely challenged by a number of factors, including but not limited to:Limits to how much farther it can continue to disproportionately capture future revenue gains at the expense of drivers; Slowing growth in the sector, escalating the frequency of profit-killing price promotions; Thin margins and stubbornly high operating costs, in the absence of strong scale economies or network effects; and growing regulatory risk in many major markets, likely to increase Lyft’s costs, cap growth or both.

The bottom line? Lyft’s statement in the S-1’s section of risk factors may be chillingly accurate: “We have a history of net losses and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability in the future.” --Lyft S-1 Registration Statement, page 21

Dan Wang, Lambert Family Associate Professor of Social Enterprise in the Faculty of Business

March 20, 2019

I think it is surprising that $0.14 on average of every Lyft rise goes to Amazon Web Services. This shows that the platform economy depends more heavily on cloud solutions than many investors actually realize. It is evident, thanks to the increasing contributions margin, that Lyft has been able to reduce costs through economies of scale and economies of learning. However, investors have to realize that investing in Lyft is really an investment in the entire ride-sharing and mobility platform industry. On the other side, investing in Uber would be more about investing in the future of logistics.

Amazon Cancels HQ2 Expansion in New York

Mark Cohen, Director of Retail Studies

February 15, 2019

I think the opposition to Amazon’s move to Long Island City is understandable but regrettable. It’s also understandable that Amazon has decided to abort its plan rather than face an endless round of local discord. It’s really a shame that cooler heads did not prevail.

But this represents the classic “chicken and the egg” situation. The lifeblood of any city/state is ongoing development. Development begets development, all of which creates jobs, government revenue and government investment in infrastructure. Unfortunately, development is almost always disruptive - certainly in the short to medium term. But what would New York City be like without its network of subways, bridges, and highways - all of which were enormously disruptive?