The coronavirus already has a new victim in the business world: the so-called 'collaborative economy'. Because collaborating often involves sharing the workplace. And no one is for the work of doing it if sitting next to a stranger, or sharing your car, or sleeping at home, can cause a contagion.
So the story of the giants of the collaborative economy in this crisis is the exact opposite of that of the big internet and e-commerce groups. Uber, the largest company in the sector, announced yesterday that it will cut its workforce by 14%, that is, by 3,700 workers, and that its CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, will not be paid in the remaining seven months of 2020.
Its rival in the transport sector, Lyft, already declared on Thursday last week the dismissal of 17% of its workforce , which implies 982 workers. In the case of Lyft, another 288 employees are going to be suspended from employment and salary, in a similar formula to that of the ERTEs in Spain, although in the case of the US it is indefinite. And Aribnb, the home rental company, announced Tuesday that it is going to lay off a quarter of its workers, a total of 1,900 people.
Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb's decisions are logical. Your market has ceased to exist. Nobody travels, nobody wants to get into a house, and nobody wants to get into a car that is not theirs. According to the website specialized in technology companies The Information, the demand for Uber services has plummeted by 80%.
In fact, the decline could have been even greater if it had not been for the Uber Eats division, home delivery service, whose activity has exploded with the coronavirus crisis since people cannot go out to eat at any restaurant and do not everyone has had the time - or the talent - to develop Ferran Adria's culinary skills during confinement and thus provoke envy attacks with the photos of his dishes in the WhatsApp groups .
Uber's shares have fallen 18.7%, while Lyft's have fallen 48% since the beginning of the year. Both companies are trading below the price of their IPOs. In Lyft's case, the stock carnage is especially serious , as its shares are at a third of the price they went public just thirteen months ago.
The listing of Airbnb, which was to be one of the largest IPOs of the year, has been suspended sine die . The hospitality company had, before the coronavirus, a market valuation of about 35,000 million dollars (32,380 million euros). Today, it survives thanks to its reserves of 3,000 million dollars and a syndicated loan - that is, granted by several banks - of 1,000 million that it obtained a month ago.
The pandemic may also be the coup de grace for the company that has staged the biggest fiasco in the collaborative economy: WeWork. The company, specialized in office rental, suffered an unprecedented financial catastrophe in 2019 when, on the eve of its IPO, its valuation went from $ 47 billion to $ 10 billion.
The disaster was such that the IPO had to be canceled, and its main shareholder, the Japanese investment fund SoftBank, had to take control of 80% of the company's capital. WeWork's problems were exacerbated two months ago, with the closure of hundreds of its workplaces worldwide due to the pandemic, which has even called SoftBank's own viability into question.
In addition to the crisis, there are legal problems. Those companies have taken advantage of the gaps in the countries' legislation to operate, and that has put them in the eyes of regulators. On Tuesday, the cities of San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco launched a lawsuit against Uber and Lyft to compel those companies to abide by state law and consider their drivers to be employees rather than self-employed. It is a measure that directly jeopardizes the business model of these companies.
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