Jim Cramer Has This ‘Great Long-Term' Ride-Hailing Stock on His Radar: ‘I Am a Buyer'

CNBC’s Jim Cramer reiterated a bullish stance on Uber, saying he is a “buyer” and calling it “one great long-term stock.” The positive sentiment is paired with Uber’s initiatives: a Zipline partnership targeting 1 million drone deliveries per day via Uber Eats, and expansion of Robotaxi operations into Japan (with Hinomaru Kotsu) and deployment of 2,000+ Pony AI robotaxis across multiple European markets. Despite the upbeat outlook, Uber shares were down 0.12% to $74.90 in overnight trading.

Analysis

The market is still valuing UBER mostly as a scaled marketplace, but the real option value here is that autonomy and delivery are turning it into an embedded distribution layer for third-party robotics. That matters because it can widen the moat without requiring the company to own the hardware economics; if the integrations work, UBER can monetize more volume per user session while shifting a portion of labor/insurance friction off its own P&L over 6-18 months. The catch is that most of this is narrative today, not disclosed earnings power, so the near-term upside is primarily multiple support rather than a clean estimate revision.

LYFT is the obvious relative loser: it has less category breadth, fewer adjacent growth vectors, and weaker ability to sell an “everything mobility” story to growth investors when capital is chasing autonomy exposure. PONY gets the speculative halo, but that also raises execution and financing-risk sensitivity; the stock can work on sentiment in days to weeks, yet the burden of proof remains very high on actual deployed fleet economics and regulatory durability. GOOGL gets a quieter second-order benefit: every incremental robotaxi rollout helps validate the commercialization path for Waymo and keeps autonomy spend strategically relevant, even if it doesn’t move near-term revenue materially.

Contrarian view: consensus is probably overpaying for the headline excitement around drone delivery. A one-million-deliveries-per-day target is not a P&L milestone unless it comes with attractive utilization and low failure rates; until then it is more a customer-acquisition and brand-defense tool than a margin engine. The setup is bullish for UBER over the next 1-3 months if the market keeps rewarding platform optionality, but it would be falsified if management guidance fails to show any incremental take-rate, insurance, or operating leverage from these partnerships, or if regulators slow autonomous deployment in Tokyo/Europe.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long UBER vs short LYFT for 1-3 months: express the view that platform breadth and autonomy optionality deserve a premium while LYFT lacks a comparable growth call option; target relative outperformance if UBER re-rates above current multiple and LYFT remains a low-growth cash-flow story.
• Add GOOGL on pullbacks as a second-order autonomy beneficiary over 6-18 months: Waymo’s addressable-market validation rises as more fleets and geographies are announced, even if the earnings impact is delayed; invalidate if Waymo rollout cadence stalls or regulatory friction increases.
• Avoid chasing PONY here; treat as a watchlist name only. If you want exposure, use a small basket position with strict risk limits, because the upside is narrative-driven while financing/execution risk can dominate over the next 1-3 quarters.
• If already long UBER, hold through the next earnings print unless management fails to quantify any operational leverage from autonomy partnerships. That would be the first hard evidence that the market has moved too far ahead of fundamentals.
• Use event-driven caution around regulatory headlines in Japan/Europe: a delay in fleet approvals would be the cleanest falsifier for the multi-year autonomy bull case and could compress the multiple quickly.