Uber Got a Bit Too Revved Up

livemint.com:

Uber Technologies’s road to actual profits has been a long one, but investors still got there early. The ride-hailing company’s second-quarter results Tuesday included its first-ever operating profit, based on generally accepted accounting principles. This comes just a little over four years after Uber listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, though the company has been on this trip for quite some time, having reported its first profit on the far more generous standard of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in late 2021.

Earnings on that basis came in at $916 million for the most recent quarter—exceeding Wall Street’s consensus forecasts by 10%. But Uber’s top line growth didn’t impress to the same degree. Revenue rose 14% year over year to $9.2 billion, which represented the company’s slowest growth in more than two years and fell a bit short of the $9.4 billion projected by analysts.

That was due to weakness in Uber’s food-delivery and freight businesses—the latter of which saw revenue slide 30% year over year. The much larger food-delivery segment saw revenue grow nearly 11% to almost $3.1 billion, but that still fell about 5% short of prior estimates. Uber’s stock price, which had doubled for the year to date ahead of the results, fell around 5% in midday trading Tuesday.

Ride-sharing still accounts for nearly half of Uber’s total revenue, and that business is doing well. Gross bookings in Uber’s mobility segment rose 25% from a year earlier to $16.7 billion, beating the $16.5 billion expected by analysts. Revenue rose even further, jumping nearly 38% to $4.9 billion.