Uber
Technologies shares climbed on Tuesday after it beat expectations for its first-quarter earnings and revenue. Strong growth in its ride-hailing and delivery-services businesses outweighed a relatively weak performance in freight.
Uber
(ticker: UBER) booked a net loss of eight cents a share for the first quarter. Revenue came to $8.82 billion, up 33% from the same period a year earlier, adjusting for currency effects.
Uber was expected to report a loss of nine cents a share on revenue of $8.70 billion a share, according to a FactSet poll of analysts’ estimates.
Uber’s gross bookings—the value of transactions made on the app—came to $31.4 billion, up 22% from the year-earlier period on a constant-currency basis. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) came to $761 million.
The company had previously guided for gross bookings of between $31 billion and $32 billion, and adjusted Ebitda between $660 million and $700 million.
Uber said that for the second quarter of the year it expects gross bookings of $33.0 billion to $34.0 billion and adjusted Ebitda of $800 million to $850 million.
Shares of Uber were up more than 8% in premarket trading on Tuesday. The stock is up 32% this year so far, as of Monday’s close.
Uber’s growth was powered by its ride-hailing, or Mobility, segment, where gross bookings climbed 43%. Delivery gross bookings were up 12%. That more than offset weakness in the smaller Freight division, where gross bookings were down 23%.
Uber is exploring separating the Freight arm, either in a sale or as a separate publicly traded company to center its focus on ride hailing and food delivery, Bloomberg reported last month.
“We significantly accelerated first quarter trip growth to 24% from 19% last quarter, with Mobility trip growth of 32%, as a result of improved earner and consumer engagement,” said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, in the company’s earnings statement. “Looking ahead, we are focused on extending our product, scale and platform advantages to sustain market-leading top and bottom-line growth beyond 2023.”
Uber executives said the company’s net number of employees was down modestly in the first quarter and it expects headcount to be either flat or down in the coming quarters, according to The Wall Street Journal. Its ride-hailing rival
Lyft
(LYFT) said last week that it intends to cut about 26% of its workforce.
Lyft shares were up 3.3% in premarket trading.
Write to Adam Clark at [email protected]
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