Taxi Driver Online

this thread has gone remarkably quiet but the current price is 44.41 so creeping up

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

It went up to $48 ish recently but has fluctuated between $40 and $48 for months.

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IDFIMH

Everything is going fabulously, or so we are being told in the earnings call. I will wait a few days for the sensible journalists to review the actual numbers. Like no mention of the £500,000,000 UK VAT bill.

Uber Reports Record Ridership and Second Straight Quarterly Profit

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/07/busi ... rofit.html

Uber on Tuesday reported financial results that showed its business was continuing to steadily chug along — and even turn a profit — as more riders and drivers used its platform than ever before.

The company had $9.3 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter, lower than Wall Street investors expected but an 11 percent increase from a year earlier, and generated $221 million in net income. That was Uber’s second straight quarterly profit on the strength of its own business operations — rather than from its investments in other companies — a milestone for a company that had long faced questions about its profitability.

Other technology companies have endured mass layoffs and nagging questions about their businesses during the recent economic downturn, but Uber has generally produced consistent, positive results over the last year. Its worst days came early in the pandemic, when travel ground nearly to a halt and drivers left the platform.

The 6.5 million drivers who ferried passengers and food around the world in the past quarter was a record, Uber said. The company said improvements it had made to the driver experience — such as showing drivers a passenger’s destination and how much the driver would earn before accepting a ride — had buoyed interest in working for Uber.

Passengers took 2.4 billion trips on Uber in the quarter, a 25 percent increase from a year earlier. In October, Uber recorded a record number of monthly trips.

“These results demonstrate that Uber continues to drive profitable growth at scale — and why we believe we’re well positioned for the journey ahead,” Dara Khosrowshahi, the company’s chief executive, said in prepared remarks.

The biggest threat to Uber’s business are labor disputes it faces around the country. Uber drivers are classified as independent contractors rather than employees, a distinction that saves the company money because drivers must pay their own expenses and are generally not provided health insurance or a minimum wage. Uber says drivers appreciate the flexibility of being independent, rather than having to sign up for shifts.

In recent years, labor activists in states like Massachusetts, California and New York have tried to chip away at that business model, contending that it exploits drivers. A challenge to a California law that voters passed in 2020, giving drivers limited benefits but precluding them from being classified as employees, is set to be heard by the state’s Supreme Court. If the court overturns the law, that will have significant ramifications for Uber’s business.

With its core business doing well, Uber is moving into other sectors and regions. Mr. Khosrowshahi said the company was making “good progress” in expanding into countries like Spain, Japan and Italy. It took Uber One, its monthly subscription service, to 18 countries last quarter, and entered a partnership with Waymo, Google’s self-driving car unit, to allow passengers in Phoenix to request Uber rides from autonomous vehicles.

On a call with investors Tuesday, Mr. Khosrowshahi struck an optimistic tone about labor pressures.

“We can operate under any regulatory framework,” he said, but “most countries, most states are moving in the direction of flexibility plus benefits and protections.”

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IDFIMH

yeah right

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

do the yanks plate/badge in Wolverhampton?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

Share price is doing very well, currently $59.13.

Uber has even joined the S&P 500.

One day they might even make some money, without creative accounting.

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IDFIMH

Always nice to see a Uber article that hasn't originated from their PR spin machine.

https://theconversation.com/ubers-u-tur ... ces-219039

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IDFIMH

Corporate finance is a field way beyond normal folks comprehension

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

Price has increased significantly over the last 6 months, now $66.44 a share.

Maybe the so-called financial experts believe a 'real' profit is doable in the next few years.

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IDFIMH

or the office land values have rocketed

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

Uber records first annual profits as market value approaches $150bn

https://www.ft.com/content/7a333873-b86 ... 17eb7ddcd2

Uber has reported its first annual operating profit, marking an “inflection point” in the tumultuous history of the ride-sharing company and sending its shares to fresh highs.

The San Francisco-based company’s earnings on Wednesday surpassed analysts’ expectations, thanks to strong demand for ride-hailing and deliveries, as well as its growing advertising business.

Operating profit in 2023 was $1.1bn, compared with a $1.8bn loss in 2022, with fourth-quarter operating income of $652mn comfortably beating forecasts. Uber also reported a net profit of $1.9bn for 2023 compared with a $9.1bn loss in 2022.

Dara Khosrowshahi, chief executive, celebrated the results as “an inflection point for Uber, proving that we can continue to generate strong profitable growth at scale”.

Uber’s shares rose about 1 per cent by midday trading in New York. The stock has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the past 12 months, more than doubling and sending the company’s market value to almost $150bn.

It is almost five years since Uber flopped at its initial public offering, first failing to meet expectations of a $120bn value and then delivering the worst-ever first-day dollar loss for a debuting US company.

Steep losses and fundamental doubts about the business model have dogged Uber since, as it has spent billions of dollars fighting ride-hailing rivals such as Lyft, food delivery competitors such as DoorDash, and hostile regulators around the world.

As the world emerged from the Covid pandemic, however, Uber’s margins fattened as competitors fell by the way side and the company ground down costs. Such is the turnaround that Uber has signalled it will announce plans for a share buyback at an investor day next week.

Analysts at Citi said this month that they expected Uber to unveil such a programme and “wouldn’t rule out” its first-ever dividend announcement.

Uber’s potential move to return cash to investors comes after it racked up more than $30bn in operating losses since 2014, the first year for which it disclosed details of its finances.

Under co-founder Travis Kalanick, the company had raised huge amounts of capital in an aggressive global push to dominate the ride-sharing market. He was replaced by Khosrowshahi, the former chief executive of Expedia, in 2017 with a mission to avoid heated conflict with regulators, cut costs and prioritise profitability.

The final quarter of the year — typically the strongest for ride-share companies — was “a standout quarter to cap off a standout year”, said Khosrowshahi. Revenues rose 15 per cent to $9.9bn.

Forecasts for the first quarter of 2024 were in line with analysts’ estimates, with gross bookings — or the value of fares paid — expected to jump to between $37bn and $38.5bn from the same period a year earlier.

Uber’s user base was “bigger and more engaged than ever”, said Khosrowshahi, with the number of monthly active users reaching a record high of 150mn.

Uber’s quarterly gross bookings were up 22 per cent to $37.6bn, just ahead of analyst expectations and an acceleration from the 21 per cent growth in the previous quarter.

The number of Uber trips in the fourth quarter surged 24 per cent to 2.6bn, while adjusted profit margins for both the ride hailing and the restaurant, grocery and retail delivery businesses improved year on year.

The grocery and retail delivery sector, which Uber has sought to push further into, accounted for a fifth of annual growth in the delivery segment, the company said.

However, $1bn of the earnings boost was due to a rise in the carrying value of the company’s equity investments — largely an increase in the worth of its stakes in self-driving car company Aurora and Chinese ride-hailing group DiDi.

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IDFIMH

So the vast majority of its profits are in fact self-assessed guesses on their investments in other loss-making companies.

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IDFIMH

Share price going through the roof based, in part, on a $7 Billion share buy back.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/uber ... 024-02-14/

Uber hits record high after unveiling first-ever $7 bln share buyback

Feb 14 (Reuters) - Uber Technologies (UBER.N), opens new tab shot to a record high on Wednesday after announcing its first-ever buyback of $7 billion worth of company shares after a strong recovery in ride-share revenue and healthy demand in its food delivery business.

The company posted its first annual net profit last week since it went public in 2019. Uber executives said they expect to make buybacks consistent over time.

"Today's authorization of our first-ever share repurchase program is a vote of confidence in the company's strong financial momentum," Uber CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah said.

Investors cheered the plans, with shares rising 12%, on the same day that thousands of drivers for Uber, rival Lyft and food delivery app DoorDash planned a one-day strike across the United States for fair pay.

The company posted free cash flow of $3.4 billion in 2023, up from $390 million a year earlier.

Following a pandemic-induced slump the ride-share market expanded sharply as people went out more and employees returned to offices. That helped Uber more than double its market value last year, and Wednesday's gains would push that valuation to more than $150 billion, if they hold.

"Uber is hitting on all cylinders and has decided it's time to return capital back to the owners," said Thomas Hayes, chairman of hedge fund Great Hill Capital.

"It's a vote of confidence in demand for their services as well as operational discipline perfectly executed by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi."

Over the next three years Uber expects gross bookings growth in the mid- to high-teens percentage and adjusted core profit growth in the high 30s to 40%.

"Dividends may follow down the line, but for now the commencement of buybacks indicates that Uber is no longer yet another tech-enabled startup burning through cash with not a lot to show for it," Dan Coatsworth, an investment analyst at AJ Bell, said.

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IDFIMH

Uber have somehow stopped all the attempts to regulate them and have emerged as the dominant player world wide and we've seen the overall decline in our trade which has resulted

Can't see them failing now unless a worldwide change in legislation makes them employ their drivers and pay realistic amounts of tax.

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Taxis Are Public Transport too

Join the campaign to get April fools jokes banned for 364 days a year !

They will fail, I've absolutely no doubt about that.

As I mentioned a few posts back, 90% of their declared profits are assumed profits based on assumed increases in other firms they hold equity in. Unsprisingly none of them have ever made a profit.

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IDFIMH