Daily Digest – November 5, 2019

Daily Digest - November 5, 2019

Terrible Tuesdays in store for Soft Bank’s portfolio. This time it’s not WeWork.

Despite growing revenues, Uber records more than $1 billion in losses

 

Uber lost more than $1 billion in Q3, leading to some downward pressure on the stock price as analysts question management plans to turn a profit by 2021. Despite the loss, Uber’s Q3 performance was significantly better than its abysmal Q2 results which posted a $5.2 billion loss. On the bright side, Uber recorded a 39% increase in revenue for the period, up from $2.9 billion a year ago. The majority of the loss is attributable to stock-based compensation tied to the company’s IPO.

 

While the core business continues to grow, other units within Uber haven’t fared as well. Uber Eats, for instance, suffered a large loss on the quarter of $316 million, up 67% from a year ago.

 

Workday acquires Scout RFP for $540M

 

Workday announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Scout RFP for $540 million. Scout RFP is a San Francisco based online procurement platform. Ray Wang, founder, and principal analyst at Constellation Research explains the move as part of Workday’s strategy to become an “end-to-end back office cloud” player. Analysts believe that the acquisition of ScoutRFP will fill a gap in Workday’s current product mix.

 

Workday Ventures, Workday’s corporate VC fund, has been invested in Scout RFP since 2018. Scout RFP has raised more than $60 million, with its most recent valuation topping out at $185 million.

 

FinTech Deserve raises $50M in round led by Goldman Sachs

 

Deserve is attempting to bring transparency and ease-of-use to the credit card world with a specific focus on those with little to no credit history. In addition to its consumer facing product, the company also offers a Card as a Service (CaaS) solution for businesses. In a Series C round led by Goldman Sachs, the company raised $50 million. Other participating investors included Sallie Mae, Accel, Aspect Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners and Mission Holdings.

The company stated that funding will be used to further develop its B2B product. Alongside the financing, Deserve also revealed plans to add 40 new hires within the next six months.