Gett, the ride-hail company operates in New York under the Juno brand, is seeking a buyer for a symbolic price, according to the reports of Quartz and Crain’s. “Unique opportunity to consolidate NYC market.”
Two years ago, Israel-based taxi haling Gett, formerly called GetTaxi, acquired the ride-sharing app Juno for $250 million. After the acquisition, Gett started its activity in the city under the Juno brand, with great success and recognition. But now Gett is looking to sell Juno.
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Bloomberg reported in July that Gatt was considering selling Juno and leaving the US market, but now the company has moved to the next stage. According to a report by Quartz, the company released a short pitch presentation titled “Unique opportunity to consolidate NYC market.”
The document describes Juno as the number three player on the New York travel market (after Uber and Lyft), with 14 million trips in 2018. It is also noted in the presentation that Juno had a run rate of $270 million in sales, and that the company’s revenues from these trips were $ 40 million. The period to which the data relate is not specified.
It is not clear what advantages Juno can provide to an existing player in the market, except for its list of passengers and drivers (many of whom already use one or more of the other services, since many drivers work in parallel with some travel booking services).
The sale may be winked at a smaller player or a new bidder, but it is not clear how many such entities would be interested in entering a saturated and problematic market like New York.
For this reason, the price sought for Gett in New York may be “nominal,” according to Crain’s report, which also claims that the company is losing $1 million a day.
Sources in the industry told Crain’s New York that the company had approached some of its rivals with a proposal to buy the shuffling activity. In the background of the sale are the continuing difficulties of Gett to become a major player in New York City, which was exacerbated by new regulations on the operation of travel services in the city, which limited the number of cars that can work in any service and obliged them to pay drivers minimum wage of 17.22 dollars per hour.
Juno CEO Ronen Ben David stated in an affidavit submitted last week to the New York Supreme Court that the new rules, which came into force on February 1, led to a significant increase in company expenses, while a 30% decrease in travel between January and February 17% of the average hourly fee received by drivers during that period.
Uber and Lyft also suffered from a decline in travel. On the other hand, Via, the smallest of the four major players in the travel reservation market in New York, actually reported that since the regulation went into effect, the volume of travel has increased by 15%.
Via, whose activity is focused on cooperative travel in a model of smart taxi service, has hardly been affected by regulation, especially since it has already paid its drivers more than the minimum wage it set.
