Uber Stock Falls As Operating-income Miss Overshadows Revenue Surge

Uber shares fell on Wednesday.

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• Uber shares fell 7% despite reporting strong annual results.
• Operating profit in the fourth quarter disappointed at $770 million.
• CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber posted its "strongest quarter ever."

Uber shares fell 7% on Wednesday following a miss on profits in an otherwise strong set of annual results.

The ridehailing company said operating profit in the fourth quarter was $770 million, up 18% but well below forecasts of $1.2 billion. The result was hit by an undisclosed $462 million legal settlement reserve that it did not elaborate on.

Uber posted a second annual profit with adjusted EBITDA of almost $6.5 billion, up from about $4 billion in 2023.

Gross bookings in the first quarter are expected to rise between 17% and 21% year-on-year to between $42 billion and $43.5 billion. Analysts had expected $43.5 billion, per Visible Alpha data reported by The Financial Times.

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber posted its "strongest quarter ever" with increased growth across the number of platform consumers active per month, trips, and bookings.

Revenue was up 20% compared to last year to $12 billion, beating expectations of $11.77 billion.

Khosrowshahi said: "Our performance has been powered by rapid innovation and execution across multiple priorities, including the massive opportunity presented by autonomous vehicles. We enter 2025 with clear momentum and will continue to be relentless against our long-term strategy."

The stock was at about $65 in morning trading, pushing the decline over the past 12 months to almost 6%.

CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah said: "We believe we remain undervalued despite these strong fundamentals, and plan to be active and opportunistic buyers of our stock."

In an earnings call after the results were released, Khosrowshahi fielded questions about Uber's approach to self-driving cars.

It has long ditched plans to build dedicated robotaxis in favor of striking deals with autonomous vehicle firms like Waymo, whose robotaxis will launch on the Uber app in Austin next month.

AVs vs drivers

Khosrowshahi cautioned that the industry faces a long road to commercialization, citing the need for robotaxis to have a "superhuman" safety record and the high costs of building an autonomous ride-hailing network.

"Right now, the costs of AVs don't even come close to the cost of drivers," he said.

Uber was yet to see any impact from Waymo in markets like San Francisco or LA, with the growth of Uber's mobility business accelerating in those regions in the last quarter, Khosrowshahi added.

He also expected more players to enter the robotaxi race in the coming years, comparing it to the impact of Chinese AI model DeepSeek on the artificial intelligence industry. "We think the same thing that's happening in generative AI is happening in AV as well."