(Reuters) – Uber Technologies surpassed market expectations for fourth-quarter revenue on Wednesday, as more people used the ride-hailing platform for office commutes and its delivery business benefited from strong holiday-season demand.
But the San Francisco-based company joined a chorus of U.S. technology firms in warning that a strong dollar would weigh on current-quarter results, and forecast quarterly bookings largely below Wall Street estimates.
Already the dominant ride-hailing service in North America, Uber has been trying to convince investors that it has more room for growth by attracting more businesses and teens to its platform, as well as expanding to less saturated markets.
Its business-focused service reported a 50% surge in bookings for the last three months of 2024, thanks to return-to-office mandates, while Uber for Teens posted a similar jump, and is now available in about 50 countries.
Overall, the company’s ride-hailing revenue jumped 25% and delivery revenue rose 21%, both above estimates. It’s total revenue of $11.96 billion surpassed analysts’ average estimate of $11.77 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Gross bookings of $44.2 billion were also higher than expectations, while net profit totaled $6.88 billion, buoyed by a $6.4 billion benefit from a tax valuation release.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber planned to drive growth in 2025 by offering customers better rates, in part by slowing hikes in insurance charges, a major expense for ride-hailing firms.
“To maximize demand, we remain committed to keeping prices as low as possible, passing through only the insurance cost increases to consumers,” he said in prepared remarks, adding that he expected U.S. UberX prices to be up marginally in 2025.
Rival Lyft has been aggressively working on luring customers away from Uber through competitive pricing and new features, such as Price Lock that offers daily commuters guaranteed prices.
Uber expects first-quarter gross bookings between $42 billion and $43.5 billion, including an estimated 5.5 percentage point impact from a strong greenback. Analysts, meanwhile, expect $43.42 billion in bookings.
The midpoint of its first-quarter adjusted core profit forecast of $1.79 billion to $1.89 billion was also slightly lower than analysts’ estimates of $1.85 billion.
Positioning itself as a major contender in the robotaxi race, the company said on Wednesday that Alphabet’s Waymo will launch its self-driving taxi offering in Austin, Texas, exclusively on Uber’s platform next month.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also said the automaker will test its driverless car technology in Austin starting June, without providing details on how it would roll out a paid service.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
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