Q2 2024 Uber Technologies Inc Earnings Call
Hello and welcome. Thank you, Operator.
Operator: Thank you and welcome to the Uber Q2 2024 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: And welcome to the Uber Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.
Speaker Change: After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
Operator: After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Deepa Subramanian, Vice President, Investor Relations, Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.
Speaker Change: If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Deepa Subramanian, Vice President, Investor Relations, Corporate Finance. Please go ahead.
Deepa Subramanian: Thank you, operator. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to Uber's second quarter 2024 earnings presentation. On the call today, we have Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and CFO Prashanth Mahendra Raj. During today's call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, are included in the press release, supplemental slides, and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted to Investor.uber.com.
Deepa Subramanian: Thank you, operator. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to Uber's second quarter 2024 earnings presentation.
Speaker Change: On the call today, we have Uber CEO , Dara Khosrowshahi and CFO , Prashanth Mahendra Raja.
Speaker Change: During today's call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.
Speaker Change: Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, are included in the press release, supplemental slides, and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted to Investor.Uber.com.
Deepa Subramanian: Certain statements in this presentation and on this call are forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today, except as required by law. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today, as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our most recent Form 10-K and in other filings made with the SEC.
Speaker Change: Certain statements in this presentation and on this call are forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and we do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today, except as required by law.
Speaker Change: For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, please refer to the press release we issued today, as well as the risks and uncertainties described in our most recent form, 10-K, and in other filings made with the SEC.
Deepa Subramanian: We published our quarterly earnings press release, prepared remarks, and supplemental slides on our investor relations website earlier today, and we ask you to review those documents if you haven't already. We will open the call to questions following brief opening remarks from Dara. With that, let me hand it over to Dara.
Speaker Change: We publish our quarterly earnings press release, prepared remarks, and supplemental slides.
Speaker Change: to our Investor Relations website earlier today, and we ask you review those documents if you haven't already.
Speaker Change: We will open the call to questions following brief opening remarks from Dara. With that, let me hand it over to Dara. Thanks, Deepa. Q2 was another record quarter for Uber and further demonstrated our ability to deliver profitable growth at scale.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Thanks, Deepak. Q2 was another record quarter for Uber and further demonstrated our ability to deliver profitable growth at scale. World's bookings grew 21% on a constant currency basis, consistent with trip growth. Our audience expanded 14% while frequency grew 6%, supported by 7.4 million drivers and couriers globally. At the same time, Adjusted EBITDA grew 71% year-on-year, and we generated record quarterly GAAP operating income. These are super strong results that we're proud of, but I also understand there are two big questions out there that I want to address before we head into Q&A.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Gross bookings grew 21% on a constant currency basis, consistent with trip growth.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Our audience expanded 14% while frequency grew 6%, supported by 7.4 million drivers and couriers globally. At the same time, adjusted EBITDA grew 71% year-on-year, and we generated record quarterly GAAP operating income.
Dara Khosrowshahi: These are super strong results that we're proud of, but I also understand there are two big questions out there that I want to address before we head into Q&A.
Dara Khosrowshahi: First, the strength of the consumer and how Uber would perform in a recession. Based on what we're seeing today, the Uber consumer is in great shape. Our audience is bigger than ever and using our services more frequently than ever. While our consumers tend to be higher income, we're not seeing any softness or trading down across any income cohort.
Dara Khosrowshahi: First, the strength of the consumer and how Uber would perform in a recession. Based on what we're seeing today, the Uber consumer is in great shape. Our audience is bigger than ever and using our services more frequently than ever.
Dara Khosrowshahi: While our consumers tend to be higher income, we're not seeing any softness or trading down across any income cohort.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Where the current macroeconomic fears materialize, we're confident that Uber can perform well because of the counter-cyclical nature of our platform. On the mobility side, more driver supply brings down prices for riders and improves reliability. And on the delivery side, merchants are investing in performance channels like ours for growth, improving selection and affordability for consumers. In fact, in Q2, the number of first-time consumers on Uber Eats in the U.S. was higher than at any point over the past five quarters.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Where the current macroeconomic fears materialize, we're confident that Uber can perform well because of the counter-cyclical nature of our platform.
Dara Khosrowshahi: On the mobility side, more driver supply brings down prices for riders and improves reliability. And on the delivery side, merchants are investing in performance channels like ours for growth, improving selection and affordability for consumers.
Dara Khosrowshahi: In fact, in Q2, the number of first-time consumers on Uber Eats in the U.S. was higher than at any point over the past five quarters.
Dara Khosrowshahi: It's clear that delivery is much more habitual than many assume, made even more so by our Uber One membership, which now covers 50% of delivery gross bookings. We'll continue to see consistent top-line growth while expanding GAAP operating income. Our track record of making and then exceeding our commitments should give investors confidence that we built the capital discipline and operational muscle to perform well in any scenario. Second, Autonomous.
Dara Khosrowshahi: It's clear that delivery is much more habitual than many assumed, made even more so by our Uber One membership, which now covers 50% of delivery gross bookings.
Dara Khosrowshahi: We'll continue to drive consistent top-line growth while expanding GAAP operating income. Our track record of making and then exceeding our commitments should give investors confidence that we build the capital discipline and operational muscle to perform well in any scenario.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Put simply, Uber is uniquely positioned to offer tremendous value for AV players looking to deploy their technology at scale. However, while the operation of a ride-hail network may seem simple, our technology obscures a huge amount of complexity. We support roughly 1 million trips per hour, and our average ETA globally is approximately 4 minutes. That's possible because of Marketplace tech that makes over 10 million predictions per second. And more mundanely, we handled more than 25 million lost items just last year alone.
Speaker Change: Second, Autonomous.
Speaker Change: Put simply, Uber is uniquely positioned to offer tremendous value for AV players looking
Speaker Change: While the operation of a ride-hail network may seem simple, our technology obscures a huge amount of complexity. We support roughly 1 million trips per hour, and our average ETA globally is approximately 4 minutes.
Speaker Change: That's possible because of Marketplace tech that makes over 10 million predictions per second and more mundanely we handled more than 25 million lost items in just last year alone.
Dara Khosrowshahi: We also know that a key factor in AV commercialization will be asset utilization. AV players will need to ensure that their expensive assets are being used as close to 24 hours a day as possible while also managing the daily and weekly peaks and valleys of ride hail activity. Uber can provide enormous demand without AV players needing to invest capital towards acquiring customers or building the marketplace tech that delivers reliability at the standard that consumers have come to expect.
Speaker Change: We also know that a key factor in AV commercialization will be asset utilization. AV players will need to ensure that their expensive assets are being used as close to 24 hours a day as possible, while also managing the daily and weekly peaks and valleys of ride hail activity.
Uber: Uber can provide enormous demand without AV players needing to invest capital towards acquiring customers or building the marketplace tech that delivers reliability at the standard that consumers have come to expect.
Uber: Let's all say that Uber will be an indispensable partner for AV players of all sorts. We're in late-stage discussions with additional global AV players to join our platform, and we'll have more announcements in the coming weeks and months.
Speaker Change: Thanks to the Uber team for another great quarter. With that, operator, let's open the call for questions.
Speaker Change: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. Please ensure that your phone is not on mute when called upon.
Operator: Your first question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Your first question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley . Your line is open.
Brian Nowak: Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. The first one on AV, Dara, I appreciate the color and even the extra color in the press release.
Speaker Change: Questions are...
Brian Nowak: Any more detail on what you're seeing in Arizona around incrementality of rides from the partnership? How do we think about sort of the relative unit economics? And philosophically, what is your strategy of reinvesting dollars to sort of drive more AV growth versus sort of delivering profitability?
Speaker Change: And then the second one, on mobility specifically, can you talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing on mobility, MAP-C versus frequency growth drivers, just so we can sort of break apart what's driving that growth in the quarter for mobility. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Sure. Absolutely, Brian . Thanks for the question.
Speaker Change: So I don't want to speak specifically to Arizona because obviously we have Waymo as a partner there and I want to...
Speaker Change: Hold confidentiality, et cetera, as any partner should.
Speaker Change: But, when we look more broadly...
Speaker Change: at our operations with the various AV players that we see. What we do see is that the utilization.
Speaker Change: that these AV players are able to to develop on our network is significantly higher than the utilization. We believe that they're able to run out without a network on a 1P basis. So 3P utilization is significantly higher than 1P utilization.
Speaker Change: And if you think about the role of the marketplace, the role of the marketplace is to drive utilization of fixed assets. I mean, it's, in the end, it's why a McDonald's or a Starbucks or even Domino's now works with us. They have direct channels to consumers.
Speaker Change: But they also work through the marketplace to bring demand, more demand to their stores, so to speak. And we think the same will be true of AV players, which is as long as we're able to drive higher utilization, and the utilization that we drive, the incrementality,
Speaker Change: We think significantly exceeds the take rate that we will charge on average for mobility, not including insurance costs, our global take rate is around 20%, so you'd have to drive 25%.
Speaker Change: Increasing Utilization
Speaker Change: We believe that those utilization numbers are possible, and we think that we can exceed those kinds of utilization numbers.
Speaker Change: Right now, the economics and the math are definitely working.
Speaker Change: I think the additional benefit that we bring to these players is we have a dynamic dispatch model that can determine what are the pick-ups and drop-offs that
Speaker Change: An autonomous player can effectively play with, you know, the pickup point is...
Speaker Change: Easy, it's within a block. Same thing with the drop-off points. And then what are the circumstances when we should dispatch human for a particular pickup or drop-off if the route is complex or the pickup or drop-off has some special circumstances?
Speaker Change: So we're able to essentially allow autonomous players
Speaker Change: to dispatch in situations where we know that they will succeed.
Speaker Change: So all in all, the early data is quite encouraging.
Speaker Change: And as I said, we've had lots of discussions with other players out there. We don't think this will be a winner-take-all market.
Speaker Change: And we think that we will continue to have the most liquid and largest marketplace.
Speaker Change: that will have humans and AV players as part of it during this pretty long hybrid period as Autonomous is developing and regulators are trying to figure out exactly how to regulate it.
Speaker Change: Prashanth, do you want to take the second one?
Prashanth: So maybe I'll start with just restating how we did for Q2 and our outlook for Q3. So for Q2, the results that we printed, if you do it at a constant currency, very strong at 27% year-over-year growth.
Prashanth: For Q3, we're looking for sort of a repeat in that mid-20s range, again, on a constant currency basis.
Prashanth: But when you dig into why do we have such confidence in the mobility business, I would take you back to the framework we talked about in February , that mobility over the three years that we gave you should be growing at the mid-teens or better. And that's coming from a couple items. On the user side, we still believe that we have a pretty massive TAM that we can go after.
Prashanth: We're continuing to drive product innovation, and we talked about a couple of those at GoGet earlier this year. And we're continuing to find new demographics and areas to continue to expand in.
Speaker Change: Maybe one data point on TAM that I think is helpful for folks is our monthly penetration of consumers, and we define that as folks who are over 18 years, is less than 20% across our top 10 countries. So a lot of room to run there.
Speaker Change: Another key driver will be frequency, which I think folks understand to be how our monthly actives, how many times our monthly actives engage with the platform. We are launching new products.
Speaker Change: Continuing to improve reliability so that when you when you call for an Uber we're able to get you one at a time that you're looking for and of course the benefits of membership. Only about about half of our riders take one to two trips per month so again plenty of upside there to continue to drive this as a more frequent frequent daily use case.
Brian Nowak: And then, Brian , I think you'd asked about our strategy to reinvest to drive, let's say, AV growth versus profits.
Brian Nowak: You know, generally...
Speaker Change: We are able to lean into our newer products, so for example, if you look at Moto, which are two-wheelers in Latin America and a number of developing countries, if you look at our shared product, UberX Share, where we get more than one passenger in a vehicle, or even taxis,
Speaker Change: Those newer products are growing faster than the base business and their margins are substantially lower than the base business.
Speaker Change: But we're able to, as we scale, we're able to leverage our cost base, our technology improvements in terms of targeting, in terms of CPT, allow us to have a profit envelope to be able to reinvest into our newer products. AD is one of those new products.
Speaker Change: While overall increasing profit margins. This is something that we've been doing for years
Speaker Change: and we think AV will be part of the same equation. So, I don't, you know, AV is not something that we're going to look to make substantial profits for.
Speaker Change: from over the next five to 10 years. And that's just fine because we'll be able to build a lot of liquidity in the marketplace to kind of continue along the path that we have been operating in over the past five years.
Speaker Change: Great, thank you both.
Speaker Change: You're welcome. Next question.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Doug Anmuth: Thanks so much for taking the questions. Dara, can you just talk more about the importance of the BYD partnership as you bring new EVs into global markets, and then perhaps how that can tie into AV over time?
Speaker Change: And then, Prashanth, just if you could talk more about the drivers of delivery, profitability, good upside there in the quarter, and what gives you the confidence on the clear path to eBitda profit in grocery and retail as well. Thank you.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Yeah, absolutely, Doug. So I'll start with BYD. You know, the electrification of our fleet is an incredibly important initiative for us.
Speaker Change: We are, if you look at Uber, Uber drivers are switching over to electric five times.
Speaker Change: All the regular drivers well, so it's a very targeted segment that we're going after and we're hoping that kind of governments can help us go after as well
Speaker Change: The number one reason why some drivers hesitate to move over to EVs is affordability.
Speaker Change: And the fact is that BYD, when you look at cost and quality,
Speaker Change: BYD is really second to none in terms of any manufacturer out there. We're very, very excited with the partnership.
Speaker Change: We believe we're going to bring over 100,000 new BYD EVs onto the Uber platform across some of our most important global markets out there.
Speaker Change: And, you know, we've always talked about climate being a team sport. We are going to be leaders in terms of climate change and having BYD as a partner is just terrific to see.
Speaker Change: More recently, BYD has committed to very, very significant investments in the AV space.
Speaker Change: And judging from what they have accomplished in the EV space, I would not, I would make a bet on them in AV as well, but the investment that they're making in AV is in the billions, and we're very much looking forward to partnering with them on both EVs and AVs.
Speaker Change: Prashanth? Yes, so I think your question was on delivery profitability. So although we don't we...
Speaker Change: We don't want to draw attention to incremental margins. We did have a pretty terrific quarter for incremental margins and delivery 10% for the second quarter. So putting a little context around that.
Speaker Change: The, the, uh, the...
Speaker Change: We are clearly seeing the benefits of scale as it runs through the delivery business and we still have many levers that we're continuing to tune to drive that profitability in delivery. That includes some incredible tech.
Speaker Change: that the team has built that continues to drive down the cost per transaction, cost per trip in terms of operational improvements. We've got great improvements in advertising. I think we mentioned in the prepared remarks that's now running in excess of a billion dollars on a run rate basis and continuing to find ways both operationally and with tech.
Speaker Change: to reduce some of our other costs like refunds and appeasement which are still a bit of a drag on the delivery segment. The fact that we were able to grow delivery
Speaker Change: Profitability while continuing to have very strong growth in growth really is a is a good indicator of how much strong growth we're seeing in that profitability. I think delivery EBITDA was up like 25 basis points.
Speaker Change: Sequentially, and that is despite grocery growing at a substantially faster rate than delivery.
Speaker Change: and many more. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Grocery profitability. It's what we've talked about in the past. It is, you know, using the power of the platform, we can bring down the customer acquisition costs and drive those cost efficiencies. We've got 15% of our Eats customers are now using grocery. That's up about 200 basis points year-over-year as of the middle of the year. And we're seeing retention on grocery also improving. I mentioned the ads revenue, and then also starting, given that our selection's improving, we're also driving down consumer promotions and continuing to add more and more merchants on to the platform. We mentioned Costco, and I think in the press release for prepared remarks, we also mentioned a customer acquisition.
Speaker Change: and a couple other grocers. So, all in all, things are on track to where we gave you in our three-year model.
Speaker Change: Grocery is continuing to be a strong story for delivery business. Just one very encouraging trend on grocery and retail is that ad spend on grocery and retail more than tripled on a year-on-year basis.
Speaker Change: Obviously, that's a very high-margin product, and we are continuing to expand our CPG product now into a bunch of new countries. So the momentum there is terrific to see.
Speaker Change: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Eric Sheridan: Thanks so much for taking the questions. Maybe two, if I could, coming back to the delivery business. Building on the last set of comments, how do you think about the potential longer term for increased utility, increased frequency as you layer more supply into the delivery network, and what you continue to learn about the relationship of evolving the experience for consumers and what it means for platform growth over a longer period of time? And then also on the delivery side, we've seen a lot of market consolidation and market rationalization in some of the countries around the globe. How do you think about the asset portfolio on delivery and your current marketing positioning against some of those industry dynamics?
Speaker Change: You're seeing on the capital side. Thanks so much.
Speaker Change: Yeah, Eric, so what we're seeing in terms of delivery is that the long-term growth is incredibly promising, and especially our ability to expand into the adjacent category of grocery and retail, you know, the grocery and retail TAM
Speaker Change: is actually bigger than the online food delivery, Tam. So not only do we believe we've got a long runway in online food delivery, but we're just getting started as it relates to grocery and retail.
Speaker Change: We now have 1.1 million merchants on the platform. It's up 13%.
Speaker Change: Our Merchant Penetration in Most Countries.
Speaker Change: still is very low, well under 50%. And every time we add a merchant, because we have more diversity of choice,
Speaker Change: Average conversion tends to improve for consumers who are kind of searching for their favorite restaurant or, you know, favorite dessert place. And each merchant gives us actually another item to market against.
Speaker Change: as it relates to search engine optimization or search engine marketing in third-party channels as well.
Speaker Change: So, new merchants add, you know, conversion, choice.
Speaker Change: and actually are another item to market against. And we're very, very long way in terms of full merchant penetration in the marketplace.
Speaker Change: And it all results in EDA retention being up globally in every single mega-region just in June on a year-on-year basis. So, right now, we believe there's a very, very long one rate for growth.
Speaker Change: The more...
Speaker Change: Consumers use our product in a multi-product way, whether it's a mobility user using delivery or a delivery user buying from grocery and retail, the more they transact on the platform, multi-product
Speaker Change: Consumers spend three times more than single product consumers.
Speaker Change: And for us, the more products we add to the marketplace...
Speaker Change: The more kind of this this benefit adds on to it and then on top of that you you add our membership product as well.
Speaker Change: which is now over 50% of bookings.
Speaker Change: You know, the volumes are strong. We are not having to buy our way into strong volumes. We're kind of earning our way into strong volumes, and I think the fundamentals are going to be there for some time to come.
Speaker Change: In terms of our portfolio, we had made the strategic decision a few years ago, it was probably three or four years ago, to exit markets that we didn't think we could either be the number one or number two, and if we're the number two, the ability to move to a number one position.
Speaker Change: We've gained category position delivery in every one of our top 10 markets on a year-on-year basis.
Speaker Change: It's a function of the great execution of our operations team, the technology that we're shipping, and then the power of the platform. There's no other global player who operates both in mobility and delivery or has as broad a platform as we do. So we're very happy with our portfolio, so to speak.
Speaker Change: And I think the results speak for themselves.
Speaker Change: Eric, as someone who's been in the business coming up now on my one-year anniversary soon, I'm surprised, I was surprised to learn how sticky the food delivery business is. It is very habitual, and we've got great data that shows that stickiness is improving. I think I look back, right, five, six quarters of data, and it gets better every quarter in terms of eater retention.
Speaker Change: So there's clearly the trajectory to follow what we're seeing in mobility.
Eric Sheridan: Appreciate it. Thank you.
Eric Sheridan: You're welcome. Next question.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Justin Post: Thank you. I wonder if you could revisit the consumer downturn scenario.
Justin Post: What would you expect to happen for mobility if we do have a recession or a bigger downturn as far as?
Speaker Change: Maybe trade down or looking for lower price rides, the impact on bookings and profitability.
Justin Post: And then, Prashanth, maybe you could talk about...
Speaker Change: It looks like you've turned the corner on independent contractor deals.
Speaker Change: and Massachusetts other areas. What happens to your cost when you sign those deals and can you cover it with higher fees or what are the business model impacts of signing those deals? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, Justin, in terms of a consumer downturn scenario on mobility, we've seen these circumstances in a number of markets. LATAM has been through a bunch of cyclical trends.
Speaker Change: etc. And usually a downturn, kind of the leading indicator of a downturn is a weak job market.
Speaker Change: We might be seeing it in some of the Western markets. We might not. It's very difficult to tell.
Speaker Change: But when there's a weaker job market, typically our driver supply on the mobility side significantly improves. We're a very, very flexible work platform.
Speaker Change: Average earnings per utilized hour for drivers in the U.S., for example, is $33 per utilized hour. So it's highly flexible and the earnings per utilized hour are strong.
Speaker Change: So typically what we see is improvement in driver supply, as driver supply improves, surge comes down, ETAs improve, the service itself becomes more compelling, and as a result,
Speaker Change: Volumes typically turn out to be quite sticky.
Speaker Change: In addition to those trends, we are actively investing in affordability, right? The membership program essentially brings prices down.
Speaker Change: For both mobility and delivery, and we're investing in products such as two-wheelers and three-wheelers and UberX Share, all of whom, you know, provide discounts of, let's say, 25 to 50 percent.
Speaker Change: of let's say the price of an UberX as well. So we think that we can thrive in upturns and downturns.
Speaker Change: And I think that the team has proven that they've, you know, kind of execution capability to be able to perform in any kind of a market. And listen, we're watching trends very, very quickly, and I do believe we'll be able to adjust as needed.
Prashanth: Prashanth, do you want to talk about Massachusetts? Yeah, I will. I will. Justin, maybe I'll also just start by just reminding folks that we have three different
Prashanth: So we have the traditional independent contractor, which is how most people think of Uber, and that is the model that the company was largely built on. And then over time, we've adapted to now the IC plus model, which is what you referred to for Massachusetts, and that's where we enter into agreements to provide some level of benefits. There are still some countries that we use a fleet model where an independent company sort of handles the actual execution on the ground, and we serve as feeding them the global or the in-country demand or the in-city demand.
Prashanth: So, specifically in Massachusetts, we reached a deal with the Attorney General that settled on a set of standards for earners. That includes, you know, how we measure or how we define time on the platform, certain health care, family, and medical leave benefits.
Prashanth: as well. As a consequence for that, the Attorney General dropped their action against Uber and we're no longer in pursuit of a ballot issue in Massachusetts like we had very successfully done in California.
Prashanth: The consequence of that is we will factor that in to our operating model in Massachusetts. But as we've said, back in February on our Investor Day, we still have plenty of runway to focus on operational costs. So while this will be built into the cost structure that we push to the market, we continue to believe that there's plenty of runway ahead for us to continue to drive down our operating costs through the support costs and payments and a variety of other measures that we continue to sort of grind out those basis points that will continue to make Uber an affordable option for all.
Speaker Change: All right, thank you.
Speaker Change: You're welcome. Next question, operator. Your next question comes from the line of Nikhil Devnani with Bernstein. Your line is open.
Nikhil Devnani: Hi, thanks for taking my question. Dara, I wanted to ask a two-parter on autonomous vehicles.
Nikhil Devnani: First, can you help us understand how much of the ride share demand takes place during peak hours and mornings and evenings? I would imagine that utilization math around the peak is really at the core of your value prop to partners.
Speaker Change: And then second, the partnership model makes a lot of sense to us for both sides, but there is a world where providers choose not to partner, they choose to compete more directly.
Speaker Change: So, my second question is around, I guess, what the plan B is for Uber in the event that leading players choose not to extend partnerships or engage in partnerships. How do you navigate that scenario? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So in terms of peak and trough, while
Speaker Change: We haven't disclosed the numbers. There are very, very significant peaks during rush hour, both ways, obviously in the mornings and going at home during kind of after hours, drinks, et cetera.
Speaker Change: and and we are able to shape demand and supply actually you know demand through search when we need to and supply obviously positioning our drivers
Speaker Change: through incentives either on a temporal basis or on a
Speaker Change: Geographic basis, you know, if there's a concert going on, etc.
Speaker Change: The good news there is that through our incentive structure, essentially those are variable costs for us. We will pay more during those.
Speaker Change: Peak Periods, and then when we don't need supply, we can take incentives out. So we have a model where essentially we're able to shape supply to match demand in a variable basis.
Speaker Change: I think that in an AV world, the car is there at all times.
Speaker Change: So you kind of have to pay the overhead for the car and the amortization of the car during all periods.
Speaker Change: So we think kind of a hybrid network.
Speaker Change: that can that consists of both humans and robots can handle the peaks and valleys much more effectively than a pure play network.
Speaker Change: In terms of A-B partnerships, etc., I would tell you, Nikhil, that based on the conversations that we're having…
Nikhil Devnani: We are highly, highly confident.
Nikhil Devnani: of being able to acquire
Nikhil Devnani: AV content, if you want to call it that, on a global basis. The fact is...
Speaker Change: This is not turning out to be a winner-take-all market.
Speaker Change: Originally, I think that was the concept why Uber wanted to develop the technology itself, but every single OEM is investing in some L2 or L3 technology.
Speaker Change: If you look at some of the newer tech coming in terms of imitation learning technologies that
Speaker Change: have taken kind of the imagination of folks through LLM.
Speaker Change: that same technology, we believe.
Speaker Change: can potentially introduce
Speaker Change: A new wave of AV through implementation learning at substantially lower capital cost that was necessary historically.
Speaker Change: So we think there are going to be many, many AV providers.
Speaker Change: if there are many, many AV providers.
Speaker Change: The marketplace and our marketplace is by far the largest marketplace, global marketplace, both for mobility, delivery, and then freight as well.
Speaker Change: The marketplace will have a very, very strong position. So at this point, we don't see any signal that a Plan B will be necessary. Also take note that we have investments, strategic investments, and a number of AV players.
Speaker Change: Aurora, we're working with Waymo for example and there are other investments that we have in AV players to make sure that kind of plan A is a right plan going forward. So far I'd say so good.
Speaker Change: And as I mentioned in my remarks, we will have more partnerships to announce in the next week, weeks and months. And I think, you know, the market will see and you'll see that Plan B isn't necessary.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Thanks, Dara.
Speaker Change: You're very welcome. Next question, operator.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from the line of John Colantoni with Jeffreys. Your line is open.
John Colantoni: Great. Thanks for taking the questions.
John Colantoni: Given the continued progress on mobility frequency, I was curious if we could go back to some disclosure you provided about a year ago showing that pre-COVID cohorts in the U.S. and Canada had lower frequency than more recent cohorts. How has
Speaker Change: Mobility usage progressed across cohorts over the past year. And what does that progression tell you about the opportunity to keep driving frequency higher through multi-product adoption?
Speaker Change: And second, the $1 billion in advertising run rate suggests
Speaker Change: Over 50% growth, which is really strong, but a bit of a deceleration from more like 80% exiting last year. Talk about how restaurants are balancing investments and sponsored listings versus merchant funded offerings, which you mentioned grew over 70% here in the quarter. Thanks.
Speaker Change: So, John , in terms of mobility frequency, while we're not going to disclose, you know, specifically what frequency looks like.
Speaker Change: I would say that when we look at lower-cost products, when you look at UberX Share,
Speaker Change: Haleables, 2-Wheeler, 3-Wheelers
Speaker Change: The frequency of some of the newer products.
Speaker Change: is significantly higher than the frequency of, call it, the X products, etc. When you look at the overall frequency numbers for both mobility and delivery, they're up on a year-on-year basis.
Speaker Change: It is absolutely helped by multi-product usage, it is absolutely helped by membership as well. So, whether you look at cohorts, whether you look at new customers,
Speaker Change: High income, low income, the frequency numbers for us in both mobility and delivery are very, very constructive.
Speaker Change: You want to talk about ads, Prashanth?
Prashanth: As we're able to drive, and we see very strong cooperation from merchants in using merchant-funded offers to drive their demand, it is actually being a very helpful way for them to address
Prashanth: What's happening with some of the large enterprise customers, we are seeing our SMBs really lean in more and are seeing strong growth in this.
Speaker Change: I'd also say that when we look at the category levels that folks are shopping at on the merchant side, we're continuing to see folks shopping at what we would have categorized as a more expensive or I think it's a $2 sign category versus the single dollar sign. So we're again seeing folks.
Speaker Change: The growth continues pretty significantly. We're a bit over 1% of
Prashanth: We think that target is certainly achievable. And actually for grocery and retail, we think that the number can be well over 2% based on what we see in terms of competitors, what we see in terms of what Amazon is doing. The focus for us with sponsored listings right now is increasing the number of monetizable impressions.
Prashanth: per user session through introducing new app formats and placements.
Prashanth: and really increasing the monetization of search in a smart way that doesn't hurt the core consumer experience. So we have holdouts to make sure that...
Speaker Change: Advertising is a complement to our Eater experience and at the same time is a targeted way for merchants to reach our audience. And if you think about sponsor listings
Prashanth: audience for a particular merchant and then merchant funded offerors because of the price nature of those offerors tend to improve conversion as well.
Prashanth: For Uber Profitability
Prashanth: You know, the sponsored listings business is more profitable for Uber, but we think merchant-funded offers are a very important strategic part of our drive.
Prashanth: to improve the affordability of the overall marketplace.
Prashanth: From Sponsor Listings to
Prashanth: Merchant Funded Offerors in a back-and-forth and a targeted way to achieve what their goals are. So, the team is doing a great job. We continue to invest in our sales team.
Prashanth: and the technical teams continue to ship some pretty impressive product out there. Let me give you one metric we haven't shared before, and that is globally, restaurant funded offers or merchant funded offers have grown 70% year over year.
Speaker Change: Thank you both. All right, can we get next question? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler with Barclays. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Hey guys one more follow-up on ads with talk about talked about getting to
Speaker Change: 1.6% of gross bookings
Speaker Change: for ride hail ads. So I know we talk about
Speaker Change: Delivery ads quite a bit, but...
Speaker Change: What's the status of your Ridehill side advertising business of late? And then the letter mentioned the Instacart initial kind of read. Can you provide a little more color on what you're seeing thus far from the Instacart partnership? Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, absolutely. So for mobility ads, we haven't introduced the target in terms of the percentage of gross bookings.
Speaker Change: We are very, very sensitive to the fact that people come to Uber, you know, looking for a ride first.
Speaker Change: and to the extent that we introduce them to some of the premium brands that are advertising with us, we want to make sure that that experience...
Speaker Change: is an excellent experience for the rider and also an excellent experience for the advertiser.
Speaker Change: and it's resulting in some very strong ad engagement from riders, click-through rates are...
Speaker Change: Over 2.5% compared to industry averages that are less than 1%.
Speaker Change: So I think for us the focus is more on quality versus quantity.
Speaker Change: And I think that we'll continue that focus going forward.
Speaker Change: The contribution of advertising is very, very positive in terms of newer ad formats that we are introducing, improving targeting capabilities.
Speaker Change: and then also Investments in Measurement and Attribution for our ad partner. So, we're very, very happy with the progress here, but I don't want to put a percent target because
Speaker Change: The Instacart's kind of geographic penetration.
Speaker Change: Maybe just a reminder to folks, we only went live in the second quarter of 24, where Uber Eats is live on the Instacart app, so still early days.
Speaker Change: All right. Can we take our final question?
Speaker Change: Your final question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with Evercore. Your line is open.
Mark Mahaney: Ten markets, less than 20% penetration. My recall is that about a year ago, you'd said it was a little under 10%, so you've had nice growth there. Are there particular markets where you could, what are your lead markets? How high have you seen that penetration go? I assume that you're going to be able to go higher than 20%, but any clues you've seen in the markets that you've been in to tell you how high that could go would be helpful. And then could you also talk overall about subsidies and incentives for drivers and
Mark Mahaney: and Consumers. And where those are now, and is this something that's kind of a flatline expense going forward? Is there more leverage as a percentage of bookings, or even in absolute dollars? How do you think about those incentives and subsidies going forward? Thanks a lot.
Speaker Change: was to move to the TAM penetration that we're seeing in the UK. That's worth another $13 billion in gross bookings.
Speaker Change: Call it 8% or so of our current run rate just by moving the U.S. to the U.K. So we know the opportunity is there. We are seeing Brazil, I think, is another great example. We're seeing really explosive growth.
Speaker Change: The frequency in Brazil is a really impressive number that also, I think, is a great metric for how we have confidence that as we continue to feed more markets and continue to expand our mobility products, availability, reliability into more geographies, that's going to continue to provide runway. And that sort of links into your second question, which is, as we think about balancing supply and demand, I would say the overall sentiment at a global level today is that supply is in a better position than it has historically been.
Speaker Change: The leadership team Uber faces is we have so many areas that we could pivot those dollars into and they greatly exceed our ability to fund within our financial framework that we gave you. So much of the time is spent on capital allocation to ensure that we are both making decisions that are right for the near term in terms of continuing to make sure the market is liquid, but also providing the right incentives that we need to continue to fund future growth products. I think our...
Speaker Change: Our Teens product as an example, which is one that we've launched, and I may ask Deepak to help me here with the metric. I think Teens user base, if you...
Speaker Change: This quarter we opened up Luxembourg, and last quarter we opened up Hungary. So we're continuing to find new geographies as well as expanding existing countries into new areas.
Speaker Change: Look for us to continue to make that balance while trying to stay within that great operating framework we gave you of driving mid to high teams, GB growth with high 30s to 40% EBITDA over the next three years.
Prashanth: Thank you, Prashanth.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Turn it back to you, Dara. Yeah. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining the call, and a huge thank you to the team at Uber. Prashanth and I and Deepak get to talk to investors about all the accomplishments and the consistent execution of the team, but it's actually the teams on the ground, the technical teams who deliver in good markets, bad markets, uncertain markets, and we certainly wouldn't have the kind of execution that we've had without everyone at Team Uber contributing. So a big thank you to Team Uber. And just a reminder, we're going to be on the West Coast, in Chicago, in New York, and in Europe .
DIPA: in the in the coming quarter. So very accessible for folks. So reach out to Deepa if you want to see us. Awesome. We'll talk to you next quarter. Thank you again.
Speaker Change: This concludes today's conference call. We thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.