Uber Technologies, Inc. (UBER) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Uber Technologies, Inc. 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ron Sugar, Independent Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Uber Technologies, Inc. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, operator. And will the meeting please come to order? I'm Ron Sugar, Independent Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Uber Technologies, I will be presiding as Chair of this meeting; and Tony West, our Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, will serve as secretary of the meeting. Along with my fellow directors and executive officers of the company, I would like to welcome you to our 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We appreciate your attendance, your interest and support of Uber, and this annual meeting is held pursuant to the bylaws of the company and written notice to all stockholders. We're pleased to hold our first Annual Stockholders' Meeting virtually as we aim to increase access and participation for our stockholders around the world in a safe manner for everyone, especially in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic and Uber's continued efforts to help reduce the spread. I'll remind all stockholders to kindly observe the rules of conduct for this meeting, which are posted on the virtual meeting site and some of which I will highlight. Only business matters, which to be conducted at the meeting are the matters set forth in the notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders and the 2020 proxy statement dated March 30, 2020. Only our stockholders of record as of the record date, March 16, 2020, are permitted to vote. We have allotted 30 minutes for Q&A and to allow us to answer questions from as many stockholders as possible. We will limit each stockholder to one question with 2 minutes for each question, starting with questions submitted in advance of the meeting. Stockholders may submit questions at any time during the meeting in the space provided on the virtual meeting screen. And while we welcome questions, we do not intend to address any questions that are, among other things, irrelevant to the business of the company or to the business of the annual meeting, derogatory or otherwise in bad taste or not otherwise suitable for the conduct of the annual meeting. Recording of the annual meeting is strictly prohibited. Now I would like to introduce the Directors of Uber who are in attendance today. We welcome Dara Khosrowshahi, who also serves as our Chief Executive Officer; Ursula Burns; Bob Eckert; Mandy Ginsberg; Wan Ling Martello; Yasir Al-Rumayyan; John Thain; and David Trujillo. I'd like to also offer a special recognition to Garrett Camp, our Co-Founder and a former Board Director who is not standing for reelection today. Garrett will, however, continue with the company as a Board observer and a valued technical adviser. Also attending this meeting are representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers, our independent registered public accounting firm. Now I will turn it over to Tony West for the formal portion of today's meeting. Tony?

Thanks, Ron. I'm Tony West, the Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary of the company. We're conducting this meeting in accordance with our bylaws and the rules of conduct, which are posted on the virtual meeting site. We've received an affidavit of mailing from Broadridge Financial Solutions certifying as to the giving of notice of this meeting and the sending to stockholders of record as of March 16, 2020, the notice of Internet availability of proxy material, which Broadridge commenced distributing to stockholders on March 30, 2020. In addition, the Board of Directors has appointed [ Ms. Kathy Weeden ] to serve as the independent Inspector of the Election for this meeting. Her oath of office is with the secretary of the meeting, and will be included in the minutes of this meeting. I also have a copy of the 2019 annual report, which includes financial statements certified by PwC. A copy of this annual report was sent or made available to each stockholder entitled to vote at this meeting and an electronic copy of the annual report is available on the website used to access this meeting. The notice of meeting and the affidavit of mailing, together with the attachments thereto and the 2019 annual report, will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. A list of holders of record of common stock of the company as of the close of business on March 16, 2020, is available for inspection during this meeting by any stockholder on the webcast page used to access this meeting. A copy of the list of stockholders will be filed with the records of the company. On March 16, 2020, the record date for this annual meeting, there were outstanding and entitled to vote a total of 1,727,296,298 shares of common stock. I've been informed by the inspector of election that there are 1,436,239,337 shares of stock represented by proxy or approximately 83% of all of the shares entitled to vote at this annual meeting. The shares represented exceed 50% of the total shares entitled to vote at this meeting and thus, constitute a quorum present to conduct our meeting today. The polls for voting on all matters are now open. All Uber stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting have the ability to do so. If you're a stockholder entitled to vote and have not yet voted or if you want to change your previously cast vote, please do so via the website used to access this meeting. Please remember that if you have already voted by proxy, it's not necessary to vote again. After voting has been completed on all matters on the agenda. We will close the polls, and the inspector of election will provide her preliminary report. We'll move now to a review of the proposals. The first proposal to come before the meeting is the election of Directors. At this meeting, we are seeking to elect the 9 Directors listed in the proxy statement for a 1-year term, expiring at the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Information about the nominees is contained in the proxy statement. Since no other nominations were received prior to the deadline established in the company's bylaws, no additional nominations may be made at this meeting and I declare the nominations to be closed. We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I'll pause for a brief period. Seeing none, we'll move to the next proposal. Proposal 2 asks stockholders to approve an advisory resolution on the fiscal year 2019 compensation of the named executive officers. All is described in our proxy statement. This proposal is advisory. Although nonbinding, the vote will provide information to our Compensation Committee and our Board of Directors regarding investor sentiment about our executive compensation philosophy, policies and practices which our compensation committee and our Board of Directors will be able to consider when making future compensation decisions. We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I will pause for a brief period. Seeing no questions, we'll move to the next proposal. Proposal 3 asks stockholders to approve an advisory resolution on how frequently they believe we should seek an advisory vote on the compensation of our named executive officers. Stockholders have the option of recommending an advisory vote every year, every 2 years or every 3 years or abstaining from making a recommendation. The Board of Directors recommends that the stockholders approve the company to seek future advisory votes on the compensation of our named executive officers every year. This proposal is advisory. Although nonbinding, the vote will provide information to our compensation committee and our Board of Directors regarding investor sentiment about how frequently our investors would like to approve on an advisory basis, the compensation of the company's named executive officers. We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I will pause for a brief period. We do have one question on this proposal. What is the cost of annual votes on compensation? We have -- and the answer to that question is there are no additional costs involved. Seeing no other questions, we'll move to the next proposal. The next matter to come before the meeting is the ratification of the appointment of PwC as the company's independent registered public accounting firm. The Board of Directors recommends the ratification of the appointment of PwC to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm and to audit the company's financial statements for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I'll pause for a brief period. And it looks like we have no additional questions on this, so we'll move on. The polls are about to close. So if you've not yet voted, please do so. I'll pause for 3 minutes to allow any shareholders who would like to vote to do so. [Voting]

We have 2 minutes left in the voting. [Voting]

We have 1 minute left in the voting. [Voting]

Since everyone has now had an opportunity to vote, the polls are now closed. The inspector of election has delivered her preliminary report. And I will now announce the preliminary results. Mr. Chairman, based on the inspector of election's preliminary report, the following are the meeting results, including the preliminary vote counts. Each of the 9 nominees for Director has been duly elected as a Director of the company to serve for a 1-year term that will expire in 2021 with average approval of more than 97% of votes cast. The resolution on an advisory basis for the compensation of our named executive officers for fiscal 2019 has been approved by 70% of the votes cast. The stockholders have approved the resolution on an advisory basis for the frequency of future say-on-pay votes to take place every year, with approval of 99% of votes cast. And the ratification of the appointment of PwC as the company's independent registered public accounting firm has been approved with an approval of 99% of votes cast. We will file the final report of the inspector of election with the records of this meeting. We expect the report -- we expect to report the results of the voting on a Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within 4 business days of this meeting. Mr. Chairman, back to you.

Thank you very much, Tony. That concludes the formal portion of this meeting. The meeting is now adjourned. I will now turn this over to our CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, to provide a business presentation followed by our Q&A session. Dara?

Ron, thank you very much. Hi, everyone. This is Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's Chief Executive Officer. Before we get into the slides, I'd like to pause for a moment to let everyone review the important disclaimers. I'll give you 10 to 15 seconds to read them, and then we'll get into the slides. All right. Why don't we get started? First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today and your support. It is an extraordinary time for the world, for every industry and for our company. While I spend some time on a brief recap of our progress since the IPO, I'll spend the bulk of my time discussing how we're navigating the impact of COVID-19 on our business. I'm sure many of you use our products and services, but for those who may be new to Uber, we're a global tech platform serving multitrillion-dollar opportunities in mobility and commerce, such as ridesharing, food delivery and freight. The strategy is to be a one-stop shop and operating system for everyday life, whether you need to move around a city with ridesharing, transit, bikes or scooters or order food, grocery or pharmacy deliveries, our technology enables you to access those services seamlessly. In Ridesharing, which is our most established and largest business line in 2019, we have a global leadership position, and we're committed to establishing a #1 or #2 position in every eats market we participate as well. We've consistently added roughly $15 billion of gross bookings over the past few years, facilitating 7 billion trips in 2019, with 111 million monthly active platform consumers by the end of last year. And adjusting to the impact of the global pandemic, last week, we've reaffirmed our commitment to reaching total company profitability on an adjusted EBITDA basis. We're now targeting for that first quarter to be in 2021, just a few quarters, not years behind our prior target of Q4 2020. With that recap, I want to address the unprecedented challenge we're all facing today. We're doing our part to help flatten the curve around the world, including by telling everyone who uses our platform to stay home if they can. Doing so is not only the right thing to do for communities, but working together to defeat this virus represents the best path to recovery for local economies. I'd like to take you through some of the steps we've taken to help cities, vulnerable populations, frontline workers and all of those who rely on our service. Our Board and leadership team are in constant communication to address the fluid situation. In March, and with an abundance of caution, all of our global workforce started working remotely from their homes as cities and countries started implementing shelter-in-place-like orders. We've made available several resources to help our employees navigate through the tough situations that they may be finding themselves in. Now in terms of supporting public health and safety, we're shaping our response based on health authorities' recommendations. We've incorporated in-app safety and health messaging for both earners and customers and further suspended our UberPOOL and shared rides products. We committed to providing 10 million free rides and deliveries to health care workers, seniors and people in need. For instance, we've begun providing $1 million in rides and food to health care workers in New York City and up to 200,000 free rides for NHS staff in London. Our various teams quickly swung into action. Uber Medics is helping provide transportation for frontline health care workers to and from their homes to medical facilities. While Uber Freight is delivering critical goods at cost with over 21,000 relief loads shipped to date. Now turning to drivers. We've taken a number of steps to help them maintain access to earnings opportunities in a safe manner. We're urging governments around the world to include drivers and delivery people in any relief programs, and we're surfacing this information to them so that they can readily access it. We're providing them up to 14 days financial support to any drivers that may be diagnosed with COVID-19, have been asked to self-isolate, or have pre-existing conditions that puts them at a higher risk profile. We've also started to distribute disinfectants and masks for drivers around the world. We made it easier for drivers to find other work by featuring earnings opportunities on our platform such as Uber Eats and Uber Freight. We're also focused on helping local restaurants and small businesses with various initiatives, including faster onboarding and daily payouts. We add an option for our customers to directly add contribution to restaurants when they order, and Uber is matching up to 5 million of these contributions with donations to the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. We realize it's a very challenging time for everyone, and we're focused on partnering with cities and communities to work through this crisis and into the road to recovery. Now before I turn it over to Tony, I want to reiterate what we told investors last week. We have a strong balance sheet and ample liquidity, and it's my job to ensure that remains the case regardless of how fast or slow the recovery is. We've taken several cost-saving measures to bolster that position, including, we significantly reduced our marketing and incentive spend and deferred real estate CapEx for planned offices in Chicago, Dallas and Mexico City. Consistent with lower trip volumes and our hiring freeze, we announced the reduction of our customer support and recruiting teams by around 3,700 employees. And Careem, our wholly-owned subsidiary in the Middle East took a difficult step of reducing its workforce by 31%. We also announced that we're merging our JUMP unit into Lime. Within this deal, Uber customers will still have access to bikes and scooters through our app, while the costs are taken off our P&L, reflecting annual run rate EBITDA savings of $160 million. Altogether with the actions we've taken and the actions we intend to take in the near future will result in a reduction of more than $1 billion in annualized fixed costs versus our Q4 plan. Reaching profitability as soon as possible remains a strategic priority for us. We believe the disruption caused by COVID-19 will impact their time line by a matter of quarters, as we said, not years. While no one could have predicted the swift and intense impact that COVID-19 would have had on our lives and on our business, I'm incredibly proud of the quick and decisive action our team has taken to respond to the changing environment. While we don't know exactly when or how this recovery will occur, we're confident as soon as people start moving, Uber will, too. We look forward to helping cities reopen, and I believe that we can play an important role in the economic recovery of cities all around the globe. And now to Tony, to conduct the Q&A portion of the meeting. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dara. I now invite you to ask any questions you may have regarding the company and its business. We've allotted 30 minutes for questions. Please follow the instructions provided on the virtual meeting screen to submit your questions, and we will attempt to answer as many questions as we can in the time that we have. As a reminder, if we're unable to answer any questions pertinent to the meeting due to time constraints, we'll be sure to post answers to a representative's set of questions after this meeting on our Investor Relations page at investor.uber.com. As noted in the rules of conduct, only appropriate questions will be addressed. So we have a number of questions that are coming in, and we've had a number of questions that were submitted prior to the meeting. So we'll begin to take those in order. The first question is from [ David Crafty ]. David asks, analysts have made the assertion that our business has no moat and that other businesses can set up equivalent services that are more lean than ours. I don't specifically accept this, but if there's truth to this, have we considered starting a parallel effort to rebuild Uber without all the legacy code and assumptions using a much smaller parallel team in order to disrupt ourselves. What would that process look like, including the building of software and migration of current users? This is for you, Dara.

All right. Thank you, Tony. And David, thank you for the question. We respectfully disagree with the assertion that our business has no moat. And we think that we've got multiple moats, if you want to put it that way. Personally, I'm not a big fan of moats because they're defensive in nature. We're a company that is growing very quickly and you'll find us taking more of an offensive stance than trying to defend ourselves with moats. But that said, if the translation of moats is structural business advantages, so to speak, that keep us competitive, we have many of those. I think first among those is our brand. Uber is a truly global brand. It's one of the top 100 brands globally. We have been in business for 10 years now, and we are an everyday brand. We are a brand that people turn to for their transportation, for their food. Our drivers and our delivery partners turn to for earnings, either when they need it or for the minority of them, will work over 40 hours. But we -- millions of people are turning to us every day and that is a powerful force, so to speak, and a very significant advantage over our local competitors. Second area that I will point to is the global nature of our business. We compete against many players around the world, but we're really the only player that has a global footprint, either directly or through some strategic investments that we have. Being global allows you to magnify your brand and your services. It allows you to amortize the substantially greater investments that we make in technology and service over a higher number of transactions. So we can just invest more than our local competitors because we have a global scope to invest against and many, many more transactions so that on a per transaction basis, our costs are quite effective, but on an overall basis, we're able to invest in our service, invest in safety, invest in many aspects, whether it's the transportation of people or the transportation of things that our local competition just can't invest in because they are local and not global. A third element of our business model that we think is significant is the fact that we are multiproduct. You see that with our Rides and Eats business, and this very, very difficult situation as it relates to COVID-19, while we have talked about our Rides business taking a significant hit in terms of volumes, our Eats business is thriving, and the ability for us, kind of the hedge that we have and also the ability, for example, for us to offer our drivers the opportunity to deliver food as well to continue to earn in this kind of an environment, again, is an advantage that many of our monoline competitors simply don't have. On the consumer side, we have let many of our riders know that we've got Uber Eats available. And obviously, they've taken us up on that. Uber Eats is incredibly popular, but our ability to cross-promote Rides into Eats during this particular time, and then within the economy for us to send over our Eats customers back to our Rides customers, again, a structural advantage that our monoline competitors don't have. And then last and certainly not least is, I think that our technology, our technical staff, our product folks is really second to none in the industry. We have been trailblazers in terms of innovation. And that innovation allows us to offer essentially a service that is superior, for example, our -- because we're bigger than the other players, the drivers driving our platform have a structurally higher utilization rate often than our competitors. Again, we can cross-dispatch our drivers over to Eats, and Eats over to Drive, when appropriate. The network technology that we have as far as mapping, routing, pricing, et cetera. There are many, many advantages that we have, which may not be apparent to Wall Street analysts, but they add up and are certainly going to be very significant in an environment where capital isn't free. I think that many of these -- the strengths in our business model are going to show even stronger as profitability becomes much more important in investors' eyes and in a more difficult environment. So we very much disagree with that notion, and it's our intention to prove it out. Thank you for the question.

Thanks, Dara. The next question is from [ Oscar Rivera ], also for you, Dara. Oscar asks, a key tenet to the strategy has been increasing the power of the platform. However, consumers still face a suite of disarticulated offerings across Rides Pass, Ride and Save, Eats Pass, Rewards, a branded credit card, among others. How will these initiatives coalesce into a more powerful flywheel like Amazon Prime that -- such that it's simpler for consumers to buy into?

Yes. Oscar, it's a great question. And I think that the advantage that you see, it goes to the last question, that the many ways in which we can have touch points with our riders and our drivers and our couriers is an advantage. And it's an advantage that we've taken -- we have taken at heart. This is a high-frequency business. And the high-frequency touch points that we have are an area that we've absolutely invested in. And each of these products in and of themselves provide an ROI. We're very disciplined in our testing to make sure that whatever products that we put forward with our riders, with our eaters, with our couriers, et cetera, have been tested and are value additive. That said, I do think that we can do a better job of coordinating the various offerings, building intelligent layers to increasingly articulate the power of the platform. Kind of putting together a seamless platform that allows these users to have access to all of the great features that we have, but essentially move them from one part of our platform to the other. So I think that all of these touch points, the frequency of the touch points create a superior business model and we think a superior experience, but we can definitely do better in terms of bringing it all together and coordinating it amongst all the touch points, and that's definitely an optimization we'll look into going forward.

Thanks, Dara.

Next question, Tony?

The next question is from Lila Holzman, from As You Sow, on behalf of Amalgamated Bank. She asks, we thank the company for its engagement and sustainability issues and look forward to Uber's disclosure of climate-related metrics, including travel efficiency and carbon intensity of rides. Given that transportation emissions are rapidly growing and have become the largest contributor to global emissions of climate pollution, even while efficiency of vehicles is increasing, the regulatory and environmental risks of vehicle transport are also on the rise. When will Uber set targets to reduce its significant contribution to climate change, in terms of its absolute greenhouse gas emissions? And when will it commit to aligning its GHG emissions with the science-based targets of the Paris Climate agreement? Dara?

You bet. Thank you, Lila, for the question. We absolutely want Uber to be a part of the solution to address climate change and are working with cities to help create a low-carbon transportation future. That's absolutely a priority of ours. Now to unlock the opportunities we have to reduce our emissions, we're going to continue and invest in products and advocate for policies that will provide an alternative to car ownership, support greater adoption of bikes and scooters. For example, greener and electric vehicles. When and where it can be done safely, the use of pool trips and public transit. So these are all areas that we're investing in, that we're partnering with and we will do so going forward. I think as we've shown with our safety report, we're committed to transparency. We're committed to accountability and that this principled approach is not going to be any different for environmental sustainability. That's why we committed to publicly disclose the environmental impact of rides on Uber's platform. We're actively now inventoring emissions, including the indirect emissions associated with user engagement with our product. And while we haven't set a specific time line for target setting, we're currently working through the footprinting process and evaluating global best practices for target setting, including science-based approaches. So stay tuned, this is an area that we are active in, and an area that we expect to be a leader in. In the end, this is about providing alternative to car ownership. This is about moving transportation to safer, more environmentally friendly, electric type of transport and Uber is committed to be part of that solution.

The next question was anonymously submitted. Are you looking at potential mergers or divestments, given the current economic climate and potential issues with ridesharing given COVID? Dara?

Yes. To respond to anonymous, we're always looking at alternatives, both organic and inorganic. I think the COVID situation, obviously, we're more focused on the safety of our community, the safety of our employees, making sure that we are operating in the right way. But we continually look at potential mergers or divestitures. And I think if you look at the example of our merger of our JUMP subsidiary into Lime, with that divestiture, if you want to call it, we still have exposure to the bike and scooter market. We think that we're a very significant investor and one of the leaders, and one of the companies that is best positioned to be a winner in the space. Both in the U.S., but especially globally as well. Lime's operations in Europe as well as our operations are quite significant. And as a management team, that we really believe them. So that is an example of a merger and a divestiture, if you want to look at it that way. That we believe is both strategic and timely and is reflective of the current environment and all that comes with it. So we have a great team, kind of a corporate development team. We are in dialogue with many players and because of our being Uber, the biggest player in this area, the global player, you can imagine that we're having lots of conversations, and we always have those conversations with an eye towards continuing to build a great service long term and maximize shareholder value along with it.

The next question was also anonymously submitted. Given the decline in the stock price, how can you assure shareholders they will see a recovery in their position? Dara?

Sure. I think that there's a -- we can't control markets and certainly public markets. So I think that it would be 2 strong statements to say that we can assure shareholders that they're going to see a recovery in their position. I think that's subject to market moves, so to speak, that are very much short term out of our control, but what we can say is that we're taking the actions that will improve the probability of a recovery as it relates to shareholders' position and will significantly improve the probability of improving their position in the long term. We're focused on navigating through this crisis that absolutely leaves us in a position, a stronger position, as the world starts to recover. That includes tough decisions like reducing costs. That includes decisions such as refocusing some of the investments that we're making to make sure that we're focused in our core. And it is our belief that Ridesharing as a category is going to bounce back when the recovery starts and will be one of the early services that bounces back as cities get going again. 90% of our survey consumers, for example, I think this was a survey in France, expect to use Uber within 3 months, and 2/3 expect to take it within a month. So as these cities get moving, and the evidence that we've seen in Hong Kong, for example, especially as folks start to get back to work, Uber is going to just be a part of their getting back to work and will be an early part of that recovery. And as Nelson talked about in our call, we are seeing kind of week-on-week growth off of a small base that indicates that as cities open up, Uber is certainly going to open up as well. And I think regardless of what the world looks like, we're confident that we're going to maintain our leadership position in Ridesharing. We're confident that we're going to continue to strengthen our position in Eats. And we believe that we're structurally set up. And as a management team, we are committed to continue to drive towards profitability. I think if we execute on all of that, we think that investors will be happy with the progress that they see. And usually, over the long term, if companies are doing the right thing, the share price moves in the direction or a positive direction if the company is doing the right thing. So we can't give assurances short-term, but we absolutely can give you assurances that we're very focused as a team, that this is an important service for the world. And as the world opens up, Ridesharing will open up. And we have a great hedge. We have a great business in Eats that just got a lot bigger and has incredible potential ahead of it, along with a cost base that will allow us to move into profitability, like we said, delayed, we believe, by a quarter and -- oh, by a couple of quarters, sorry, but not years. So I hope that's a good enough answer for you, and thank you for believing in us, and we hope that, that belief pays off.

Our next question comes from Kyle Seeley from the New York State Retirement Fund. She asks, in October 2019, New York State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, sent Dara a letter requesting Uber to commit to releasing a comprehensive sustainability report that addresses various material ESG issues, including Uber's ability to attract and maintain employees, drivers and platform users. Uber has not yet responded to this request. Uber has included limited information in its proxy and doesn't address relevant policies, performance and improvement targets. She says or asks, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the ESG-related risks to Uber's business, especially risks, to its drivers and customer base. Will Uber commit to reporting on these important issues in 2020? And I thought we would have Ron address this one.

Thanks, Tony, and thank you, Kyle, for that question. We share your view that the ESG issues do matter and are very important to our shareholders and to the shareholder values that it reflects on Uber. This is reflected by our concerted efforts to address a number of the ESG risks head on and both of new policies and procedures and also with some industry-leading transparency and accountability. This is something that not only management feels strongly about, but also your Board does as well. Let me give you a couple of examples, the safety report. Late last year, we publicly released our first U.S. safety report, which offered details on our safety progress, our processes, our data on the most serious safety incidents that have occurred on our platform. And we believe that people have the right to know about the safety records of the companies they rely on. And that publishing this data can help us as we work forward to prevent serious safety incidents. I might point out also that Uber is a complete leader in this area and we would encourage our colleagues in other companies to come forth with comparably transparent reports. We've also published a diversity and inclusion report in 2019. And it is more than just a box to check at Uber. We're committed to ensuring that our internal community reflects the incredible diversity of the communities that we serve. In terms of proxy disclosures, we've included a tremendous amount of ESG data in the proxy statement, including information about the human capital and employee surveys that we've run internally, our progress with respect to diversity, our oversight of cybersecurity, how the Board oversees our culture. And of course, again, our safety efforts and our commitment to the environment. We have put out the U.S. and Canada user data reports. And we published this, covering our responses to request for user data by regulators and law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and Canada. And finally, on climate, as was mentioned earlier by Dara, we've made public commitments to report climate-related metrics and are working on our first stand-alone ESG report for publication in 2020. So we appreciate the question. I think we're hard at work doing everything we can to be transparent and disclose the information requested.

Thanks, Ron. The next question is from [ Marcio Olivera ]. And [ Marcio ] asks, are votes open or anonymous? That's pretty straightforward. The votes are anonymous. The next question is an anonymous submission. Could you provide shareholders your projection for future contributions by Uber Eats and China's DiDi to Uber's future earnings in 2020 and further. Dara?

Sure. As far as Uber Eats goes, we did talk in our Q1 call regarding Uber Eats' losses in Q2 being at similar levels as Q1 and then the loss levels coming down. These are generally our higher volumes, so the implication will be that Uber Eats' margins, so to speak, EBITDA as a percentage of GB would be improving as the year went on. And certainly, we would expect the same of 2020 we have also indicated that we expect longer-term revenue margins for Uber Eats being closer to 15%. And you're seeing our revenue margins improve quarter-on-quarter fairly consistently. Quarters are -- quarters can be unpredictable, but we do see upside in revenue margin as it relates to Uber Eats. Beyond that, we haven't commented specifically, but this is a business that we're big believers in. We saw very significant acceleration in the top line growth rates. As it relates to Uber Eats. We're investing in adjacent areas such as grocery, both organically and also through the proposed acquisition of Cornershop as well as package delivery. So we expect great things at Uber Eats. We have to lean forward and keep investing in the business because we think the category is enormous. And certainly, with the new environment, we're seeing an onrush of new customers that are trying the delivery services of all kinds. And we want to be there with -- for them. And so far, we're seeing excellent signal as it relates to Uber Eats. As far as China DiDi, we have an investment in DiDi. It's a significant investment in DiDi. We did announce in Q1 write-down in our investment level. Again, reflecting the current environment. But the data that we hear coming out of China is that things are bouncing back. We have a lot of respect for the DiDi management team. They are both -- they are competitors with us in many markets, but we also have a big investment in them. So while we don't specifically disclose kind of future contributions. We think it's a significant investment that has the likelihood of becoming worthwhile significantly. And being a big part of our value creation going forward.

The next question is an anonymous submission. Will ridership ever go back to normal? Will you install partitions in cars to protect riders? And what measures will you take to allay passenger fears and increase ridership. Dara?

Yes. I think the short answer is yes. It absolutely will. I think that is obviously dependent on society coming back to normal, cities coming back to normal. And our health care system and the global health care system, finding a solution to this horrible virus. But I absolutely personally do believe that we will get back to something resembling normal. And as I've said previously, what we do believe is that as cities get moving again, Uber is going to be one of the early kind of services that are going to be used because in some ways, our services are quite utility-like in their nature, and many, many millions of people have come to depend on them to get around in a safe and environmentally friendly way. As far as safety, et cetera, we have a team. I think we've got the leading safety team in the world. And we are looking at many ways in which to give both our drivers and our riders and with the Eats business, our eaters and couriers comfort. I'd say first in line are masks, but that's not it. We're looking across an array of areas to make sure that the experience that our riders and drivers have is as safe as it possibly could be, and also making sure that our service remains available to as many people because it's important service in any city.

Our next question is another anonymous submission. Is Uber on a path to profitability? Dara?

Yes. We believe it is.

The next question comes from [ Mark McGann ]. Mark asks, it is highly likely that the impending economic and societal crisis will force a previously unlikely harmonization of corporate taxation levels, if not globally, and certainly within the European Union. Uber chose Amsterdam to base its international operations, in large part for a highly advantageous corporate taxation arrangement, totally legal, which has a direct and substantial impact on earnings and profitability. What are the plans to adapt to the new world reality subsequent to the public health crisis and the ensuing financial, economic and societal crisis? Thanks and stay safe. Dara?

Yes. Thank you, Mark. I guess, I'd say we have our Amsterdam office for many factors. Very important amongst them is the talent there. We've got a great employee base there across many different factors of our operation. And it remains a -- and it will be a very important part of our talent base going forward. And the basis is more than tax. It's many things, especially access to great employees. As far as adapting to the new world reality, I will tell you that our priority right now is safety. And how do you guarantee or guarantee as much as you can, the safety of our riders, drivers, couriers, eaters, restaurant partners in this new world reality? As far as corporate taxation structures, local presence, et cetera, we are consistently looking at these factors. We have a team that is deeply experienced in these areas. And we are making sure that we structure the business to be locally relevant, make sure that we are participating in local economies, and I think what's a little different about Uber than many of, say, the other digital companies out there, is that the vast majority of the monies that are flowing through our systems stay local, right? They go through -- they go from our riders to our drivers and the money flows very much are kind of different from the typical money flows of other companies out there. So that said, right now, safety is job number one. And we have a team that is thinking about kind of new world realities and structures very much on a daily basis going forward.

Thanks, Dara. And given that we've come up on time, that will be our last question. I'll turn it back to Ron now.

Okay. Thank you, Tony, and thank you, Dara, for those answers. I want to take this opportunity to, again, thank all our stockholders who joined us today for participating in our first annual meeting as a public company. Thank you, again, for your support of Uber. Everybody, please have a great day.

The conference has ended. You may now disconnect your line.