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

All right. Good afternoon, everyone. We are thrilled to have the CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, with us for our next keynote presentation. Dara, good to see you.

Good to see you as well. Becoming a tradition.

Exactly, exactly, annual tradition. Before we get started, we have the important disclosures, another tradition. All important disclosures, including personal holdings disclosures and Morgan Stanley disclosures appear on the Morgan Stanley public website at www.morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. They are also available at the registration desk. Some of the statements made today by Uber may be considered forward looking. These statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statements made today by the company are based on assumptions as of today, and Uber undertakes no obligation to update them. Please refer to Uber's Form 10-K for a discussion of the risk factors that may impact actual results. All right. So yes, it is an annual tradition, I would say. There's sort of a very dynamic industry in your 7 years in the world. We went through a few years where the question is can Uber be profitable, can it generate cash flow. We've sort of now moved to a debate around how do we think about growth durability, how do we think about AV positioning, et cetera. So maybe let me just start with your prioritization and sort of as you go through your day, your week, your diary, what are you sort of spending most of your time with now focused on strategically to make sure Uber is best positioned for the next 3, 5, 10 years?

Yes, absolutely. So definitely, as I look back, has never been a dull moment at Uber, both internally and externally as well. But my prioritization is really, I would say if I were to layer it, the core business, because, ultimately, the core business is powering everything else that we do, a number of growth bets that we put in place that are truly scaling and profitable, and we want both of those to remain the same. And then obviously, AV, which is about the future, call it, 5, 10 to 15 years going forward and opening up a huge addressable market for us. In terms of the core business, it -- we have to make sure that we continue to focus on the basics of reliability, making sure that every single time you push a button, the car's there, your food is there. Pricing and affordability in a world where inflation is something that consumers feel more and more, we've got to do everything that we can to drive affordability. And then, of course, selection. We are a selection-led business, both in terms of adding more drivers and couriers to the platform. We have more than 8 million drivers and couriers on the platform growing over 20%. That drives reliability. That drives pricing. And then we got over 1 million merchants on the platform as well. Ultimately, the more selection we have on the platform, the more conversion consumers have, the more opportunities to market a particular new restaurant or a grocery store that's coming on to the platform as well. So we've got very, very big teams that are completely focused on reliability, selection affordability as well. On top of that, we layer in, I'd say, our secret sauce, which is the power of the platform. And the 2 big areas of the power of the platform are driving cross-platform usage. These are riders who become eaters or eaters who buy grocery, et cetera. We are now -- 37% of our users now use multiple products on the platform. Users who use multiple products on the platform are buying 3.5x more than users who don't. Some of it is causal. Some of it's correlative. But that number was up 300 basis points on a year-on-year basis. And we have teams in algorithms that are just -- they continue to optimize this cross-platform usage. And every single year, it goes up, and every single year of that advantage that we have, that is advantage that we are the only kind of global player who's doing it, just continues to increase over our competition. That allows us to gain category position while we're increasing margins as well. And then similar to that is membership. We now have 30 million members, Uber One members. The growth is very significant, up over 50% on a year-on-year basis on a big base. Uber One members spend 3x more than nonmembers, again, some correlation, some causation as well. Uber One members tend to be multiproduct as well. And it's just rinse and repeat that core business. And that core business is a business that, while we've been in it for a long time, is still growing in the mid- to high teens. So it's a very healthy business that we're able to drive on audience and on a frequency basis. So that is -- that's always #1 because that pays the bills for everything else, right? Then on top of that, we've got our growth bets. These are a number of new businesses that we've entered into that probably didn't exist 6 years ago, right? This is -- we've got some premium products like Reserve or Uber for Business. We've got some economy products, which is, for example, Share, 2 wheelers, 3 wheelers, high-capacity vehicles. And then there's some new supply categories that we're going after, for example, taxi, and then there are some new demographics that we're going after, for example, teens. And then similar on the Eats side is grocery going to every single other retail category, delivery as a service as well, where we just deliver for various players like an Apple, like a Walmart as well. That portfolio of businesses is now at an annual run rate of $26 billion. That portfolio is a profitable portfolio and is growing exit rate probably 55% on a year-on-year basis. So it's a big business. It's entirely new. We've got our teams building these businesses and still growing at a high rate. So that business on top of that core business that's growing in the mid- to high teens gets us to the 20-plus percent growth rate that we have. And as that portfolio goes from $26 billion to $30 billion, $35 billion, it is going to allow our growth rate -- it's going to allow us to grow at scale at very high rates as well. And then, of course, there is AV. And relative to the size of the business, I'm probably spending a lot more time on the business relative to the size of the business, but relative to the promise of the business, I should be spending that amount of time. We think that AV has incredible promise. It's another trillion-dollar market that opens up. We're working with AV partners on mobility, on delivery in trucking as well. So it's something that is, again, across our platform, we are kind of -- we have the best view into AV technology than anyone else has across these platforms. And in order to get AV to scale commercially to become 5% of our business, 10% of our business, 20% of the business, we think 5 things need to happen. One is, first of all, it has to have superhuman safety. Partners like Waymo have demonstrated that. They're only getting better. They are absolute leaders there to be [ committed ] to kind of set the bar there. We do think there's an opportunity for these AVs to be multiple times safer than a human. We think we should take that opportunity. And again, we're working with many partners to make sure that our safety case, their safety case makes sense, and we're building AV in a super, super safe kind of a way. That then relates to conversations we have with regulators. And this is -- most AV is regulated on a national basis, state level, even local level as well, many, many different kind of regulatory bodies for testing, charging, et cetera. So we're having all of these discussions again with our AV partners. Regulation is moving at different speeds in different states, different cities as well. That has to come into play. Third for us is working with OEM partners. These are hardware manufacturers to manufacture these vehicles at scale. Most of the vehicles now are kind of Gen 1 vehicles, very, very expensive, very specific hardware requirements. There's a Gen 2 coming in a couple of years, which will allow, first of all, there to be more vehicles out there. And for the price of these vehicles to come down because the vehicles are very, very expensive. So we have to work with these OEM players in terms of what are the platforms going to look like, et cetera. Fourth is actually local operations. You've got to have fleet depots, recharging, repair, cleaning, et cetera. This is a skill set that we have built up over a period of time. We work with probably over 50,000 fleet operators all over the world. And so usually, we're establishing those local operations with fleet partners so that AV players, software players, hardware players, et cetera, can launch in markets very, very quickly with essentially a bunch of local players who know those markets already set up. And then, of course, then you got to drive utilization, which is we -- these are very, very expensive vehicles. The player who can drive the highest utilization of these vehicles will be able to amortize the R&D costs, will be able to amortize the variable cost of the vehicles, and you see demand not only to be highly variable on a seasonal basis but a day-to-day basis as well. So we think a hybrid market of humans and AV players on a market-to-market basis is going to be the best kind of path forward for the next 10 to 15 years. And we are talking with multiple AV players to either launch in markets. So for example, with Waymo, we've got a launch in Austin that's imminent. We've got a launch in Atlanta coming up as well. And there are a number of other AV players that we're working with to launch in international markets and in the U.S. markets this year to kind of start to operationalize those 5 elements that we've talked about. So really exciting time. The promise, again, is a very, very big market opportunity. The promise is to make our streets safer as well. And we think the position that we're in allows us to be a leader in partnership with leading companies like Waymo to help develop the promise of the AV market.

It's a great overview. Let me start by following up on AVs. I know you've had a lot of discussions about AVs.

It's an important subject. Yes.

It is. I mean -- so let's -- some investors who may be a little more skeptical of Uber's competitive positioning within AV and autonomous will say we're going from a world where we have a marketplace of millions of drivers to a future world where you may have 2 or 3 main players that sort of either operate the software or sort of are the main network running AVs in the United States. Therefore, there's a risk that either, a, Uber could be disrupted or, b, the unit economics, 2 or 3 partners as opposed to millions, are going to be inferior. What is sort of your counterargument to that? And how do you think about the key execution points to ensure that, that doesn't happen?

Yes. So I think that, first of all, like many of these technologies, and you look, for example, at GenAI and large language models, et cetera, you are seeing a real fragmentation of those markets, right? There are bigger players, but there are lots of smaller players coming in. And one of the factors that we're seeing as it relates to AV is there's a second generation of companies coming in. First of all, there are some first-generation companies that are augmenting how they have built AV technology. The heuristic technology, they're augmenting it with AV and getting terrific results there. But there's also a generation of companies that are starting kind of from scratch single end-to-end models, larger models that are showing incredible promise in terms of time to market, fraction of time to market that some of the -- that frankly, I expected 5 years ago at a fraction of capital cost as well. So every piece of evidence that we see is that, whereas 5 years ago, I might have said probably 2 or 3 players, maybe 2, 3, 4 players, the cost is getting cheaper as this business scales. And so I think that the trend is one where you're going to have many smaller players out there. You're going to have big players, medium players, smaller players. You're seeing the same thing happen in the GenAI environment as well. There are the DeepSeeks of the world as well. And whereas 5 years ago, if you gather data in the real world while you feed it to train the models, now you're gathering data. You're using that data to feed the sims, and those sims are actually creating thousands of scenarios based on that single piece of data and then training the models as well. So every piece of evidence that we see is that there are going to be multiple players, and if I look purely kind of those 5 elements of commercialization, we have a huge part to play in all 5. Ultimately, the player that's going to be able to drive the highest utilization at the lowest cost is going to have the best access to capital. And I think especially in a world where you're going to have a hybrid world with real variability of demand in a particular market, real variability seasonality in a particular market, we think that players who team up with us will structurally have higher revenue, will have lower costs as well, which will give them more access to markets to be able to scale faster. So we think it absolutely makes sense to partner up with us. And if you step back and you think just kind of very, very basic economics, our take rate, call them, mobility around the world, if you accept a bunch of different numbers, is around 20%. So 80% of the take is available for the driver. The driver is -- typically owns the car, operates the car, cleans the car, recharges the car. That's a huge capital pool, right? We're paying our drivers, couriers tips, et cetera, $20 billion a quarter now, right? So that's a huge share that's available for these players. And so I think whereas markets love the drama of there being winner take all, et cetera, the fact is that, that 80% is a big pool of capital that we're absolutely willing to share with our partners, and we think there are going to be enough takers out there for us to have plenty of supply going forward.

Okay. And then you mentioned sort of deploying some of your own balance sheet and some of your own capital buying EV-related assets on the last conference call. Maybe just sort of walk us through some of the key types of assets you're focused on investing in. How do we think about size, timing? And what are the new investments?

Yes. I think the fact is that, ultimately, these -- if you think about the fleet of cars right now that we have on the network, they're financed largely by our drivers or fleet partners, and there are multiple billion dollars' worth of hardware on our platform. Okay? They -- we will have to finance those pieces of hardware, and that piece of hardware on average are going to be more expensive because they've got lots of sensors, et cetera, on them. Early on, you're not going to have the financial formula for those cars, and you're certainly not going to have a residual value for those vehicles as well. So in the early development of these marketplaces, we think 1 of 2 things have to happen. One is that we can provide utilization guarantees to our fleet partners, which, by the way, we do today, and we have -- our algorithms are adjusting from markets where essentially all they were doing is optimizing for the efficiency, reliability of a particular marketplace to efficiency of reliability and call it, utilization guarantees to a certain class of supply as well. So either you do that and then the fleet partner can take the utilization guarantees and finance their fleet based on the utilization guarantees because they essentially have a revenue guarantee or we could take some of those cars on our balance sheet as well. It will be a very -- because the unit volumes, over the next 2 or 3 years, as you prove out the financial model here are going to be so small, it will be a very small number compared to our overall cash flow, free cash flow. But it is an area where we're going to invest some balance sheet money. Again, it will be a very, very small portion of our free cash flow, which fortunately is getting -- is pretty big and it's getting bigger.

All right. One more on AV, then we will get to the core. You mentioned a couple of the catalysts upcoming. We're going to have Austin sometime this month, we think and then over the course of the summer, Atlanta, with the Waymo-Uber exclusive partnership. It's early. I know it's very early in the AV ecosystem. But as these markets launch, what are the main KPIs you're focused on internally to sort of ensure success for both you and Waymo to sort of continue and extend these partnerships?

Yes. I think first is safety, right? It's -- I think, again, Waymo has set the standard for safety. So we want to make sure -- and I think with a partner like Waymo, I'm not worried about it, but it is always #1 in everyone's mind. If you see Austin, you'll see a bunch of Waymos kind of training on the streets right now, which is awesome. Second, I'd say is the customer love, right, making sure that the reliability is there. Often, the biggest points of friction are pickup, drop-offs, making sure the estimated time of arrivals are actually equal to actual time of arrivals. And there is a lot of complexity around pickup, drop-offs in particular areas to make sure those pickup, drop-offs happen in a smooth way. So I would say like customer love is the second one. Then we will look to make sure that we are operating the fleets at a high efficiency level, and we're able to have each car available at the maximum number of hours per day, so to speak. So I'd say it's kind of fleet operations and efficiency. And then obviously fourth for us is the utilization of these vehicles. Now we'll have some time to optimize utilization, but ultimately, utilization is very important in terms of the economics of the car. So it's revenue per car per day and/or utilization that we will look to. But that is something that we'll optimize after we get the basics right in terms of safety, in terms of customer service, in terms of fleet operations. And then we'll start driving utilization of the vehicles as well. I'm looking forward to it. And again, the teams have been working very closely with Waymo, and we're quite optimistic that it will be a really, really delightful product.

Yes. A lot of people tracking a lot of data in Austin. .

Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure.

A lot of data flying around. Okay. Let's talk about the core.

You have like an analyst counting Waymos, [ counting ] ETAs or something.

Counting the Waymos on the road, flying over, counting Waymos. All right. So the core business, I think it's -- when you laid out the multiyear outlook for the core on mid- to high teens growth, 30% to 40% EBITDA margins, really healthy free cash flow conversion, the business has actually proven, in some cases, to be even more durable than certainly I thought early on. So maybe a two-parter to the first part. If you kind of step back from your Analyst Day outlook to now, what aspects of the core have actually proven to be ahead of schedule, where you're sort of executing even better than you thought you would have from a top line perspective?

Well, I guess, you could argue the whole thing has, right? So we were -- came in at 21%, gross bookings growth, 60% EBITDA growth. Free cash flow generation as a percentage of EBITDA was 106%. So I think the team has done a really great job of execution. And I would say, for us, as it relates to the business, they're just less surprises. Like I take that as a really good sign, which is we have a team that's executing well on a quarter-by-quarter basis, on a year-on-year basis. It's getting boring, but there are just much less surprises as it relates to the business. And I would say, as it relates to mobility, we continue to be, I guess, surprised, if you want to call it that, by the strength of the core business and then some of the growth that we're making actually feeding the core. So I'll give you an example in terms of Reserve, one example. We had originally -- when we thought about the Reserve and kind of built the PRD in terms of Reserve, we thought, hey, this is -- it allows riders to pay a higher price for higher reliability, and that's a good trade. And so we will be able to get a premium, higher reliability, and that was a formula. It turns out that there's actually, especially in the suburbs outside in the less dense areas, there's a whole new user segment coming because with a relatively low reliability in those markets, they just didn't use the product, especially for use cases like airports. So the actual -- some of these newer products are completely new use cases. They are premium segments and our margins and reserves are significantly higher than the margins of the core business, but they're actually adding new audience to the business. Same thing, for example, 2 wheelers in Latin America and India. These are lower-cost products. They'll cost 40% of an UberX, and there's a whole new segment audience coming in using these lower-cost products at much higher frequency, average frequency levels. But 20% to 30% of the time when they are going out on a date, when it's raining, et cetera, they will upgrade from a 2 wheeler to a 4 wheeler to the UberX product as well. So a bunch of these newer products are actually driving audience growth, and audience growth for us, over 170 million monthly actives growing 14% has been a really nice surprise for us. And generally, I would say that core business, the expansion into less dense marketplaces, it really started with Eats, and it really started with Eats in the U.S. going into the suburbs and really going up against DoorDash, kind of DoorDash's core strength. We expanded the Eats expansion into noncore markets internationally. For example, in the U.K., we think we're now category position 1 in the U.K. as it relates to Eats. One of the biggest success stories in the U.K. for us has been growth outside of London in the secondary markets, et cetera. We've now translated that program to our mobility products as well with the Reserve and other products, again, growth outside the mainline cities. So we are pleasantly surprised by the continual growth of the core. Part of it is driven by the new investments that we're making in some of these newer products. Part of it is pleasant surprises like, oh my god, there's a huge business outside of the city cores as well. And then on top of that, you've got membership and multiproduct as well that continue to be engines of growth. So all of that for us is turning out to be -- make for a pretty good equation for us going forward.

And what about the other side of the coin when you sort of -- when you go back to your Analyst Day outlook of how you thought growth would come through, what are areas where perhaps you're not quite executing where you thought you would be? And how do you think about ways to course correct or kind of how you need to execute where you thought you would be in some areas?

So I think the team, first of all, is executing really well. But the biggest area that I believe we should do better at is just cost, right? This is inflation. So we've talked to our investors for many years about the cost of commercial insurance, for example. And the good news for us is that the increase in cost of commercial insurance is starting to decrease. To be clear, commercial insurance costs are still increasing, but the rate of increase is decreasing. And so that's allowed us to, again, decrease the rate of increase of UberX, this is a lot of words there, for -- especially in the U.S. We're working very, very hard on regulatory relief as well in certain markets like California or like a place like L.A. L.A., probably 35% of your -- the cost of an Uber is commercial insurance. It's crazy. So there's a regulatory path there, but there's an operational path out there. And the operational path has resulted in the price increases starting to ease. Building out a true low-cost product, shared product, getting 2 or 3 people into a car is a very significant challenge in -- operationally, algorithmically. We're making progress there. So I'm happy about the progress there, but this is -- I think we will be possibly the only company in the world that's going to solve this at scale. To be clear, we're losing money in share, but the loss rates are coming down. The efficiencies continue to increase, and I'm quite confident of the activity of that team. When you look at Uber Eats, for example, we are -- one of our biggest programs is what we call merchant-funded offers. So actually, merchants providing buy one, get one free, if you spend $30 on a basket, gets a $10 item for free, et cetera. These are promotions that these merchants run. Those promotions give merchants more access to our audience, and merchant-funded offers are now running at over $1 billion of, call it, savings for our eaters per year as well. And then, of course, for us, the membership program is a giant discount program, so to speak. We're trading higher frequency, higher reliability for discounts to our consumers as well. It is absolutely working. But near term, to be clear, membership is an investment, right? So the discounts come through before the frequency increases come through, the retention comes through. But we're now seeing memberships. One of the reasons why you're seeing Uber Eats growth rate actually accelerate in addition to the newer businesses like grocery, et cetera, is that you're seeing the frequency and the retention from our membership program come into play as the cohorts mature as well. So for us, just pricing to the end consumer is an area of real focus for us. And I'd like to be making more progress there than we have been in the past couple of years.

There's a lot of ways to try to slice up the P&L externally. I think one of the questions that I often get is sort of the durability of growth in the core U.S. mobility business. We think it's still growing mid- to high teens. Love your reaction to that. And then secondly is the 70-30 market. I know you have so many initiatives to keep driving growth. Talk about the durability of that type of growth.

Yes. So it will be fair to say that we exited the year at a high-teens growth in the U.S., which we're very happy about. Even the larger markets that we have, the top 10 cities in our mobility markets are growing double digits. So the core business continues to grow. It is, I think, because of membership. It's because our audience continues to grow. Frequency is now at all-time highs as well. So this is a business where just the more data you have, the more supply you have, the stronger your brand is, the more offerings with Uber Teens as a hugely growing offering as well, it's just everything kind of feeds into itself. More audience, more people coming in, more stuff to use on the product, higher frequency allows us to reinvest in innovation again, just do it over and over again. So we see a very, very healthy market in the U.S. Sometimes I'm surprised of the durability of the business. We actually grew this last year faster than we grew in -- in '25 faster than we did in '24. We've had 6 quarters of 20-plus percent gross bookings growth. So I think, whereas most people -- an analyst modeling a company usually models some slowdown because it's kind of the brainless thing to do. We've been able to not slow down as a company. And based on the investments that we're making and the execution of the team, I'm confident that we can keep it going.

What about international? I mean it's interesting, and I think through what investors talk about on Wall Street, I feel like AVs come up, U.S. mobility, Eats. And then people are going to ask about international. This is a $40 billion to $50 billion business. So what areas of international do you think are most underappreciated? And what are the keys to forward growth in the international side on mobility?

On mobility specifically, so one is international, there are a bunch of markets that are still really underpenetrated. So Germany, for example, is largest GDP in Europe, and it is 1/10 of the size that ultimately that, that market can be. And it's very, very early in the penetration curve. Spain is a huge market. Italy's a huge market. So we still have, in Europe, a number of markets that have very, very low penetration. Latin America is a market that continues to grow very, very fast, very active competitive environment from DiDi, but it's a healthy market. I think the competition actually is kind of creating a lot of growth for both companies as making it hard for others to come into the marketplace as well. And then again, like you look at Japan as it relates to mobility, this is top 5 GDPs in the world, and probably 1/20 of the size of the market. So there's a ton of penetration remaining in mobility. When we look at even our top markets, less than 10% of the adult -- or about 10% of adults 18 plus use our products on a monthly basis. So again, it goes to the durability of the business. It's pretty similar to the U.S. There's a lot of durability, a lot of growth, we think, left in the international markets.

Right. You mentioned the cost base as one area you have potential improvement. Let me ask you about sort of GPU-enabled machine learning or GenAI like technologies. We're sort of -- we're 2.5 years into this GPU and GenAI discussion now. Can you give us some examples of technologies you're using internally now that you weren't, call it, 3 years ago? And any way you can sort of quantify the benefits you're seeing or some benefits from GPUs?

Yes. So I think every company in the world is going to tell you that they're using AI and it's awesome and they're going to save lots of money. Actually, getting AI to work in an enterprise at scale, I'm finding, is really, really hard. It's very easy to have little -- call it, little optimizations that increase some efficiency about 5%, but we want much more than that, right? We want 20%, 30%, 40% increases in efficiency. And the good news for us is like I'm finally seeing real signs of it. The scale areas where you're going to see material differences in terms of AI and these larger models and having big impact on our business are with customer service. Now it's not just easy. You don't take these models and train them on a bunch of customer service interactions and explain -- and expect results. It's smaller parts of the customer service, the customer service, your history as a customer, are you a good customer, a bad customer; your claim, you said that your food was getting in late. Did it actually get in late? What's the policy? What's the communication, et cetera? We are kind of -- we have AI models optimizing each of those. Maybe we'll have one giant end-to-end model at some point, but we don't. That activity is coming together, which is going to translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of customer service savings, at, we think, better outcomes. Same thing as it relates to developer productivity. We kind of had, I'd say, level 1 of dev productivity, earlier usage -- uses of products that got us, call it, 10% to 15% improvements in productivity. We're now hitting next level. And it takes -- it's hard to get to these next levels, but I think that, over the next 2 to 3 years, you will see -- we expect to see benefits in the hundreds of millions of dollars with better outcomes, which is what we're demanding of our teams. And I would tell you that it is -- it has taken multiple optimizations for us to get there. It is not easy, but it's absolutely worth the effort that we're putting into it. And I'm a lot more optimistic today than I was 6 months ago. Like there's -- I'm seeing breakthroughs, and obviously, with the amount of capital coming into the marketplace, the ecosystem is on our side.

Yes. Great. Well, that's a good place to wrap. There's a lot to stay on top of, including over the course of the next month with Austin. Great to see you, Dara.

Thank you. Appreciate it.