Uber’s chauffeur-driven vehicle (VTC) booking platform, despite a strong increase in turnover and above expectations in the third quarter, posted a heavy loss linked to exceptional items. Its revenue rose 72% to $8.34 billion, boosted by the group’s historic activity, namely the transportation of people, according to a press release published on Tuesday.
But the San Francisco, California, company also suffered a hefty $1.2 billion loss, almost four times what analysts had expected, according to a consensus compiled by FactSet. This slippage is largely explained by the depreciation of Uber’s holdings in other companies, which reduced the result by $512 million. The accounts were also weighed down by the allocation of shares to the group’s employees, valued at $482 million.
A slowdown in passenger transport and delivery activities.
These one-offs cloud Uber’s quarter and mask the fact that operating activity was profitable in all three of the group’s activities, passenger transport, delivery and cargo. Operating profit (before taxes and special items) was significantly higher than market forecasts, which welcomed the results of the platform. In electronic trading before the Wall Street open, the stock gained nearly 9%.
In detail, although passenger transport and delivery activities continue to grow, their rate of growth has slowed down notably, in part due to the normalization of the economy after the pandemic. As for freight rates, after having exploded at the beginning of 2022, they are marking time and falling compared to the first two quarters of the year.
By region, Uber bases its growth this quarter on North America (+89%) and Europe, Africa and the Middle East (+77%). During the July-September period, the app saw the number of its monthly active users, the benchmark for platform traffic (+1.63%) increase slightly compared to the end of June, reaching 124,000,000. .
Source: BFM TV
