Uber Technologies Inc. today reported that its revenue jumped 136% year-over-year during the first quarter, to $6.85 billion, but its shares declined more than 8% in trading after the opening bell.

The share price decline may be related to the $5.6 billion loss that Uber generated during the quarter. The ride-hailing giant attributed it primarily to losses on its investments in autonomous vehicle company Aurora Innovation Inc., mobility and delivery platform Grab Holdings Inc. and ride-hailing provider Didi Chuxing Technology Co. Additionally, the company logged $359 million in stock-based compensation expenses.

Excluding those items, Uber achieved adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $168 million, a $527 million improvement from a year ago. The company’s loss per share amounted to 18 cents excluding certain items. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had expected a loss of 24 cents per share.

Uber’s $6.85 billion in quarterly revenue likewise surpassed the consensus analyst estimate, which projected $6.13 billion. 

Uber generates its revenue from three main sources. The first is its flagship mobility business, which includes its ride-hailing service as well as other offerings such as electric scooters. The second main contributor to Uber’s top line is its food delivery business, while the third is the Uber Freight division, which helps companies such as retailers manage merchandise shipments.

Uber’s mobility business grew revenues 195% year-over-year, to $2.5 billion. The revenue increase is the result of users taking 1.71 billion trips, or about 19 million trips per day on average, during the third quarter.

Uber’s delivery business generated sales of $2.51 billion. Gross bookings, a metric that measures total consumer spending on deliveries made through Uber’s platform, climbed 15% from a year ago to $13.9 billion. The company also managed to increase the business’ adjusted earnings from a loss of $200 million from a year ago to earnings of $30 million, thanks to increased operational efficiencies and a number of other factors.

Uber’s Freight business also experienced a significant improvement in profitability during the quarter. The business achieved profitability for the first time by generating adjusted earnings of $2 million. Revenue, meanwhile, increased by a hefty 506% year-over-year, to $1.8 billion.

The significant sales and profitability growth that the Freight business logged during the quarter are partly the result of Uber’s acquisition of Transplace Inc. last year. Transplace provides logistics software that helps companies manage merchandise shipments, as well as a variety of related supply chain tasks. Uber paid $2.25 million to acquire the company. 

Uber is hoping to realize net run-rate synergies of more than $40 million for Transplace by July 2023. The company stated today that it’s “well on-track” to achieving those savings, which could further improve its newly profitable Freight division’s EBITDA. Uber is also working to improve the division’s profitability in other ways, such as by automating manual supply chain tasks.

“Our results demonstrate just how much progress we’ve made navigating out of the pandemic and how the power of our platform is differentiating our business performance,” said Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi. “In April, Mobility Gross Bookings exceeded 2019 levels across all regions and use cases. There’s never been a more exciting time to innovate at Uber and we’re focused on executing our strategy to grow our platform profitably.”

Next quarter, Uber anticipates that gross bookings, or the total value of purchases made on its platform, will be between $28.5 billion and $29.5 billion. That’s up from $26.4 billion this quarter. Uber expects adjusted EBITDA of $240 million to $270 million. 

Photo: Uber