Earnings Results: Uber stock rises after earnings show profit progress
An earlier version of this report misstated Uber’s adjusted Ebitda guidance. It has been corrected.
Uber’s CEO says some of the company’s competitors in food delivery have pulled back from “unhealthy spend levels in the past that didn’t make any sense.”
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Shares of Uber Technologies Inc. were heading 7% higher in premarket trading Wednesday after the ride-hailing company showed progress on a profit metric and delivered an upbeat outlook for the current quarter.
The company generated fourth-quarter net income of $595 million, or 29 cents a share, whereas it posted net income of $892 million, or 44 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. The FactSet consensus was for a 15-cent loss per share on a GAAP basis.
Uber’s
UBER,
+2.95%
net income figure included a $756 million net pre-tax benefit largely due to unrealized gains from the revaluation of equity investments.
The company also reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda) of $665 million, whereas analysts were expecting $624 million. It posted $86 million in adjusted Ebitda a year before.
“Uber continues to offer idiosyncratic margin expansion in a tough operating environment,” wrote Bernstein analyst Nikhil Devnani.
Revenue increased to $8.6 billion from $5.8 billion, while analysts had been modeling $8.5 billion. Gross bookings rose $19% to $30.7 billion, matching the FactSet consensus.
“We ended 2022 with our strongest quarter ever, with robust demand and record margins,” Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said in a release.
On the company’s earnings call, he cheered Uber’s performance in food delivery.
“The delivery category has been pretty resilient post-pandemic, certainly more so than a lot of other categories that benefited from the pandemic,” he shared, according to a FactSet transcript. “That said, we are growing faster than the category generally if you look at us globally.”
Khosrowshahi added that some of Uber’s competitors in Europe have pulled back “significantly from what were unhealthy spend levels in the past that didn’t make any sense.”
Gross bookings in the delivery business increased to $14.3 billion from $13.4 billion in the December quarter, while gross bookings in mobility rose to $14.9 billion from $11.3 billion. Freight gross bookings rose 42% to $1.5 billion.
For the first quarter, Uber executives anticipate gross bookings of $31.0 billion to $32.0 billion, along with $660 million to $700 million in adjusted Ebitda. Analysts were looking for $31.3 billion in gross bookings and $612 million of adjusted Ebitda.
