Research archive for UBER

On Thursday, Uber and Lyft both dropped around 10% on the news that Google-backed Waymo is expanding its operations to Miami. The self-driving taxi company said it would train its cars on Miami streets in 2025 as it prepares to offer its rides to customers in 2026.

Dara Khosrowshahi has transformed Uber from a money guzzler into a cash cow over the last four years. Take a look at the image below from Carbon Finance (another cool email subscription service) which illustrates Uber's free cash flow from 2020 to the latest quarter of 2024.

In October, Uber and Alphabet's Waymo announced a partnership in Phoenix, a US city, where riders could opt-in to be driven around by Waymo's self-driving Jaguar I-PACEs. Uber's long-term goal is to fully integrate self-driving cars across all of their urban operations. Uber did stress in the partnership announcement that the number of human drivers on its platform would continue to grow for a very long time.

Uber results out last week showed that it's reached a significant milestone - its first full-year operating profit since listing nearly five years ago.

Uber achieved a significant milestone in the second quarter of 2023, posting its first-ever operating profit. This was driven by solid growth in both its ride-hailing and food delivery businesses. Note that 37 Vestact clients own Uber shares.

Uber is looking for opportunities to accelerate the sale of its stake in a taxi joint-venture with Russian internet search company Yandex. The ride-hailing giant merged its operations in Russia and other neighbouring countries with Yandex in exchange for a 29% stake in a joint-venture that was valued at $3.8 billion at the close in February 2018.

Uber was among the companies reporting third-quarter numbers. With a bit of adjusting, this was their first quarter of reported profits. The core business made money but their investment in Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing company, lost $3.2 billion in value. The ride-hailing (mobility) division made $544 million and Uber Eats (delivery) only lost $12 million, and is on track to be profitable by the end of the year.

I'm quite heavily invested in Uber and was a keen promoter of its shares when they listed on the NYSE at $42 in May 2019. As a result, another 60 Vestact clients also own them.

Remember last year Uber won a very important court case in California which concluded that Uber drivers do not work for Uber. That meant that Uber could remain a platform and the drivers essentially work for themselves.

Uber released its numbers last week showing why diversification is important in a business. The ride-hailing giant posted a narrower loss thanks to aggressive cost-cutting and growth in the food delivery operations while ride-hailing was crippled by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday the Uber share price popped by a nice 7% on the news that they bought alcohol delivery company Drizly. Uber paid $1.1 billion in a combination of cash and shares for the business.

In the midst of election madness last week, Uber reported their latest set of numbers. As expected, societal changes due to Covid have hit their mobility business hard - working from home and less travel means lower demand for a taxi service. In this last quarter, Uber's gross bookings were down 50% when compared to the year before. This is an improvement from the 73% drop reported in the previous quarter.

Amongst all the election noise yesterday, Gig economy tech companies received a big boost after California approved Prop. 22 which prevents the likes of Uber and Lyft from classifying their drivers as employees. This is big news for these companies, the Uber share price popped 12% in pre-market trade after the news was announced.

Yesterday Uber received some very good news. A judge decided that the court was satisfied with process improvements made by the company with regards to its London licence. A new licence has been issued with 21 conditions for the next 18 months.

Uber had second quarter results out last night, and they were weak. Weaker than a weak cup of tea. They racked up a loss of $1.02 per share, worse than the estimate of $0.86. Revenues were a bit better, $2.24 billion where the street had only expected $2.18 billion.