Uber shares tumble despite ‘strongest quarter ever’
Uber shares tumbled on Wednesday despite boss Dara Khosrowshahi hailing its “strongest quarter ever” amid surging demand.
The San Francisco-based firm reported a 20 per cent rise in revenue to $12bn (£9.7bn) over the three months ended 31 December.
Total trips on its platform grew 18 per cent year-on-year to around 3.1bn.
Khosrowshahi lauded the ride-hailer’s performance, which he said was driven by rapid innovation, including the “massive opportunity” presented by self-driving vehicles.
“We enter 2025 with clear momentum and will continue to be relentless against our long-term strategy.”
Uber CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah said: “Record demand in both Mobility and Delivery helped us grow gross bookings faster than the high end of our guidance, and we closed out 2024 exceeding our three-year outlook for gross bookings, Adjusted EBITDA, and free cash flow.
“We believe we remain undervalued despite these strong fundamentals, and plan to be active and opportunistic buyers of our stock.”
But shares tumbled more than five per cent in pre-market trading as earnings missed analyst expectations.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) grew 44 per cent year-on-year to $1.84bn. However, this just below the $1.85bn Wall Street had anticipated.
Income from Uber’s operations also came in below expectations at $770m, well shy of an average forecast of $1.2bn.
Prior to today’s earnings, Uber said it planned to begin the roll out of autonomous driving tech in Texas via Waymo, having previously unveiled a deal in September.
President Trump’s team has sought to ease US rules on self driving cars amid a push into the market from Elon Musk’s Tesla.
Uber over the last quarter launched services in Abu Dhabi, and in Austin, Dallas and Osaka, it has launched autonomous sidewalk robots.