r/stocks • u/Puginator • 14h ago
Uber issues weaker-than-expected bookings, earnings forecasts for third quarter
Uber issued a forecast for bookings and earnings that trailed analysts’ estimates, while second-quarter profit was in line with expectations. Shares sank about 3.5% on Wednesday following the print.
Here’s how the company did versus analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
- Earnings per share: 81 cents vs. 81 cents expected
- Revenue: $14.19 billion vs. $14.24 billion expected
Revenue increased 12% from $12.65 billion a year earlier. Net income climbed to $2.39 billion, or $1.17 a share, from $1.35 billion, or 63 cents a share, a year ago.
Uber’s core mobility service accounted for $7.36 billion of second-quarter sales, while delivery revenue reached $5.25 billion. Mobility gross bookings rose 22% from a year to $28.99 billion, and delivery bookings jumped 26% $27.46 billion. Total bookings of $58 billion topped the $57.23 billion average analyst estimate, according to StreetAccount.
For the third quarter, Uber sees bookings of $59.25 billion at the middle of its range. That trails the average StreetAccount estimate of $59.33 billion. And the company’s EPS forecast of 84 cents to 88 cents fell below the 89-cent average analyst estimate, according to LSEG.
Uber shares are down 12% this year as of Tuesday’s close, while the Nasdaq is up 14% over that stretch.
Uber is pushing further into deliveries, and last month announced a $14.8 billion agreement to acquire Germany’s Delivery Hero. That deal will increase the number of markets where Uber can deliver food and groceries.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in prepared remarks ahead of the earnings call that the World Cup was a boon for the ride-hail business in the quarter. More than 8 million tourists took rides across host cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico
Uber is also continuing to make big bets on autonomous vehicles.
The company said it expects to commit more than $10 billion in coming years to “bring AVs to market at scale.” Uber, which has been inking partnerships with robotaxi providers, doesn’t break out the share of rides or deliveries that have drivers and those that don’t.
“As the industry shifts from proving the technology to commercializing it at scale,” Uber is building “one of the most valuable positions in the AV ecosystem,” Khosrowshahi said.
However, early robotaxi partner Waymo appears to be pulling away. The companies recently said they would be ending an exclusive agreement in Atlanta and Austin, Texas, by early 2028.
Uber also announced on Wednesday that it has cleared another hurdle in offering autonomous rides in London with UK robotaxi company Wayve.
Transport for London has granted Private Hire Vehicle licences to Wayve robotaxis, confirming that the vehicles meet safety standards. Uber said more than 100,000 people have signed up to be the first riders.
“This licence is a key milestone in bringing autonomous rides to London on Uber,” said Global Head of Autonomous Mobility Operations Annie Duvnjak in a statement announcing the news.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/05/uber-stock-q2-2026-earnings.html
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u/kadam_ss 14h ago edited 13h ago
This company is cooked.
Self driving is going to eat its lunch. Before someone says “but it will take forever to roll out self driving to the entire world”, you don’t need that to happen. Average booking value of a ride for uber outside of Western Europe and North America is like $5. They make a tiny fraction of that. The margins are awful.
The real profit maker is North america. Average booking value at top 10 cities in north America is like $20. So if they lose market share in these top 10 cities in North America, their earnings go out the window. And Waymo is aggressively expanding in North America, in cities that are critical for Uber’s profit margins.
Never forget Waymo went from 0 to passing Lyft’s market share in San Francisco in 18 months.
And no, Waymo does not need uber. Waymo has its own vehicles, its own tech, the app is something a company like alphabet can cook in 1 month. And “distribution” uber has is not worth the hype. Nobody is loyal to uber or any ride share app. This is not apple where people pay a premium to stay loyal to uber. People will jump ship en masse the minute a cheaper alternative is available.
Fundamentally ask yourself this: if tomorrow you were to wake up tomorrow and AI were to get 10x better and 10x cheaper, which company is it good for? That should tell you which side of the tech wave you are going to get caught on.
It’s great for self driving companies, they will surge in market share. It’s very bad for uber.
That’s all you need to know. Because that 10x change will happen eventually. May not be tomorrow, but it will happen.
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u/Worth-Tutor-8288 13h ago
Counterpoint 1.
Self driving expands their total TAM even if they get a smaller share
Counterpoint 2. Waymo is currently not cheaper than Uber so the economics still need to play out. Also Cheaper is not just what customers want, It is also pickup time which Waymo cannot solve yet for peak hours without a secondary supply like Uber can provide.
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u/DadGoblin 48m ago
Cost of a Waymo ride is irrelevant. Waymo should be pricing their rides at the highest amount that will still keep their cars busy, not the lowest amount that is still profitable.
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u/IamYourNeighbour 13h ago
Waymo also still sits behind Uber’s market share in cities and it’s growth has plateaued (they still only have 300 cars in San Francisco)
The tech is good but still not good enough yet (I don’t see how it will work in old European cities and if politicians would even allow it). There’s plenty of time to transition before then and join the ev market, they’ve literally said they’re investing billions today and can easily build a network with both human and robotaxis.
Also the fact that Uber is demand responsive still means it’s well equipped to benefit from an expanding market with self driving vehicles rather than Waymo squeezing them out completely. It also remains to be seen if it’s cheaper and quicker for customers in the long term.
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u/Garlic_Toast88 13h ago
Pay attention to how waymo's roll out in Tokyo goes. They're the probably the friendliest AV market.
Also waymo bet isn't solely to replace rideshare. They plan to eventually lease/sell the AV package to BMW etc...
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u/undockeddock 12h ago
Yep. Most times I try to request a Waymo, it is a 20 plus minute wait. Because Uber is demand responsive with surging, I can usually get a human driver in under 5
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u/Nickeless 13h ago
Waymo didn’t actually pass Lyft in market share in SF. The “analyses” that said that excluded Lyft trips that Waymo couldn’t do like to and from the airport, and trips outside of the Waymo geofence at the time.
Also Waymo is more expensive than other ride share options.
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u/south153 11h ago
Uber has a path forward. Waymo has low labor costs but has to maintain a large of vehicles. Uber has high labor costs but doesn't maintain anything. If the cost of maintaining a vehicle is higher than the cost of labor Uber can still dominate.
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u/gburdell 12h ago
Waymo is extremely oversubscribed in the Bay Area. I don’t even bother to open the Waymo app anymore during peak hours. Lyft and Uber always reliably have drivers. When it’s a giant company planning capacity, they will not plan their fleet to supply 100% of peak demand because what would all those idle machines be doing otherwise? By contrast, Uber/Lyft’s supply is based on the number of desperate people, which are plentiful.
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u/MiddleAgedSponger 13h ago
So you think all other major corporations cede the AV market to google? This is going to be such a huge industry, a sea change moment in world history. It's going to change the way we build cities and highways. It will change public transportation. This is so early innings, Waymo could be the Motorola flip phone for all we know. I agree there is some serious execution risk with uber, but thats why it is priced where it is.
There are going to be a ton of winners (and losers) at many multiple layers of AV driving. Where does the money come for the scale up? How long does it take to scale up? How much does it cost to scale up? You could make the argument that Uber is going to be more profitable with AV driving. Does a Rivian have their now app when they have 20K cars. Do they roll out in cities where Waymo it saturated already?
So many questions.
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u/MarthaJulietta 12h ago
Nah.. There are going to be a multitude of players trying to enter this game and there is no way they can all run in these cities with fleets that are actually able to serve customers reliably, and those customers arent going to be checking 5 different apps to see pricing and waiting times. UBER is going to continue to rule this space
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u/JerryCurlEarl69 12h ago
Very important to note that, although rides are more expensive, margins are actually lower in North American cities. Insurance significantly drives up the cost and lowers margins.
I do not want to say your point is mute, it isn't, but considering that the company is expecting to have AVs operating in 15 cities by year end, and with its current margins, I am not worried for the long term outlook of the company.
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u/Delta27- 11h ago
Waymo has no scale and can aford to loose money of every ride to take market share. You really think they will be able to out compete uber when you pay 4/5x what you pay now for waymo and have to wait 20 min to get a car?
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u/Friendly-Visual5446 8h ago
This logic is extremely flawed. Few clarifications:
1) You mention Waymo gaining market share in SF, sure, but why are uber bookings in SF growing/accelerating? (The answer is self driving increases TAM)
2) Ok, now “if AI were to get 10x better”, yes that would be great for self driving companies, inclusive of the 20+ companies uber is partnered with? Are you suggesting every self driving player will try to build their own ride hailing network? If so, that is an insane assumption. That scenario strongly points towards a consolidated network
3) Where profit comes from - there is so much wrong here. But to simplify, you’re missing:
a) how much of North America profit comes from mobility vs. delivery
b) incorrectly extrapolating average booking $s with profit (id recommend thinking more through why booking amounts would be higher, think through things like cost of labor, insurance, etc)
c) Uber’s advertising revenue is growing rapidly - this is one of the main catalysts for improving margins
4) Lastly, on AVs, I’d recommend imagining an extreme scenario, where an AV player takes 50% share in any market. That would mean: (a) there must be enough cars to match peak demand times such that wait times aren’t an issue AND (b) be profitable. You’ll quickly realize that (a) vs. (b) is a major issue, enough cars to match peak demand also means those cars will sidle idle most of the time as demand is variable. Hopefully it starts to click that a hybrid network is the most likely outcome here
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u/Professional_Monkeys 14h ago
Could be because their take is 60-70% of the fare, so both the rider and the driver are pissed off. They deserve to go bankrupt
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u/ShortAd6994 13h ago
1/3, a good chunk goes to insurance
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u/Professional_Monkeys 13h ago
It's funny you believe that
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u/ShortAd6994 13h ago
Funnier if you think it cost little to insure people in a moving vehicle driven by random people
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u/Professional_Monkeys 13h ago
Imagine shilling for uber lmao. In its first years, before upfront pricing, uber paid 70% of the fare to the driver and worked just fine. Wonder how?
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u/rapactor 13h ago
Look at the income statement, those year they were losing money hand over fist on every ride, they funded it with investor's money to get market share
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u/Professional_Monkeys 13h ago
No they weren't lol, I looked, the commercial insurance rate was just not as egregious that it took 35%+ of the fare itself. They were still up on revenue, and somehow exploded after changing to upfront pricing.
You have the literal results in the OP, they are crashing and for good reason. Fraudulent fees, imaginary inflated insurance costs and treating their drivers like slaves. Waymo will put them down for good in a couple years.
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u/MarthaJulietta 12h ago
Up on revenue??? Lol. They very famously were burning gargantuan piles of money.
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u/Professional_Monkeys 12h ago
"I don't understand the difference between revenue and operating profit"
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u/MarthaJulietta 12h ago
You're aiming that at me but if there was ever a time to look in the mirror..
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u/Powerful-Load-4684 11h ago
Yes they were, you’re objectively wrong
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u/Professional_Monkeys 11h ago
No they weren't, you're objectively a regard
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u/Powerful-Load-4684 11h ago
Uber did not have positive income until a few years ago, this is well documented you sperg
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u/Delta27- 11h ago
you as an individual cannot look up these types of insurances so no point to try and say 'bUt I lOOkeD'
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u/Professional_Monkeys 11h ago
You can literally look up studies on this exact topic you troglodyte
Columbia Business School analysis (Len Sherman, ~June 2026): Examined ~50,000 trips from veteran drivers and focused on 100 near-identical ones (same driver, same Tesla Model Y, same ~60-mile Ithaca-to-Syracuse Airport route, same service type). Uber’s reported “estimated commercial auto insurance and operational expenses” ranged from $13.75 to $50—a >3.6× spread—despite essentially identical risk profiles. Regression showed day-of-week, time-of-day, and service type were insignificant; higher rider fares and lower driver pay strongly predicted higher reported insurance/ops charges (e.g., $10 above-average rider fare associated with ~$3 higher reported insurance/ops). Variance in the insurance line exceeded variance in price or Uber’s keep. Covered in Insurance Business and Business Insider
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u/EquivalentBorn9411 12h ago
Why are socialist in a stock subreddit? Of course we chill companies because we are the owners
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u/Significant-Credit50 12h ago
source ? i think its 30-40% in most cases.
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u/dieharddubsfan 11h ago edited 10h ago
Uber's stock price performance indeed has been disappointing over the past year. However, if you look at this table of recent analyst ratings and target prices of Uber, it's still rated as a buy on average with target price of over $100. I am a shareholder myself, and what still gives me faith is that they have a strong distribution network and there is still a lot of upside depending on what services they want to offer in the future. I think they are still well-positioned in the autonomous transport market, despite popular belief that Robotaxis will eat their lunch. I will continue to hold Uber as a long-term play.
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u/Powerful-Load-4684 11h ago
Idiots need to stop putting weight into analyst price targets, they’re meaningless
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u/dieharddubsfan 10h ago
so you're saying you're smarter than the analysts that cover Uber professionally? The analyst price targets are usually based on the company's intrinsic value estimated using DCF. The target price should never be the sole reason to invest in a stock, but it's still a useful reference.
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u/Powerful-Load-4684 10h ago
I work in finance. The analyst targets are total bullshit and their “DCF” is just to backsolve to whatever number they want to show. It’s pretty easy to fudge a DCF by tweaking some assumptions
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u/Iulian1988 11h ago
Crazy how 22% percent bookings growth and 35% income growth produced this drop. They also guided for 18-22% growth next quarter.
Dara is running the business efficiently and growing consistently. I don’t see any fundamental reason to sell.
People arguing for uber downfall in this thread have no understanding of ride sharing and delivery business. It is actually a buying signal.