Billionaire Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management Has 12.7% of Its Portfolio Invested in This Beaten-Down Stock

Uber reported Q2 revenue of $14.19B, up 12% year over year but below analyst estimates, while operating income rose 30% to $1.9B and adjusted EPS increased 35% to $0.81. Gross bookings grew 24% to $58B, but Q3 gross-bookings guidance missed expectations; shares are down 14% year to date and 29% over 12 months. The company is addressing autonomous-vehicle disruption through a Waymo partnership and a Rivian agreement for up to 50,000 autonomous vehicles, including an investment of up to $1.25B, with robotaxi launches targeted from 2028.

Analysis

UBER’s near-term valuation debate is not robotaxi economics but whether bookings growth can reaccelerate without incremental incentive spend. A sustained deceleration would pressure the premium multiple assigned to its platform, even if operating leverage remains intact; investors should focus on Mobility/Delivery take-rate, consumer incentives, and EBITDA conversion rather than reported revenue, where accounting treatment can obscure underlying demand.

Autonomy is economically ambiguous for UBER. The platform can preserve demand aggregation and lower customer-acquisition costs for AV operators, but its bargaining power depends on having multiple fleet partners in each market. If Waymo, Tesla, or other operators achieve sufficient local fleet density, they can disintermediate the marketplace and retain the rider relationship; until then, UBER’s dispatch, payments, safety, and cross-sell capabilities are valuable. The key 6-18 month signal is not announced partnerships but the share of autonomous trips routed through Uber, the platform take rate, and exclusivity/termination provisions.

RIVN’s potential upside from fleet volume should be discounted heavily before vehicle specifications, software-liability allocation, financing terms, and unit economics are disclosed. The strategic risk is that dedicated fleet demand adds capital requirements and residual-value exposure precisely when RIVN needs to demonstrate a self-funding path. For UBER, committed capital toward vehicle supply could also dilute its historically asset-light narrative, raising the required return hurdle versus simply aggregating third-party AV fleets.

Consensus appears too binary: either autonomy destroys Uber or driver removal creates a windfall. The likely intermediate outcome is a lower-cost ride category with economics shared among OEM, autonomy stack, fleet owner, insurer, and marketplace. That supports trip frequency but may cap UBER’s incremental margin; a rerating requires proof that platform take rate holds as autonomous supply scales, not merely lower driver costs.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Maintain UBER as a watch-list long rather than add aggressively ahead of the next earnings print. Upgrade only if gross-bookings growth and adjusted EBITDA guidance move higher while incentive intensity remains stable; a renewed bookings-guide cut would likely drive another multiple reset over the following 1-3 months.
• Express the autonomy uncertainty with a market-neutral pair: long UBER / short RIVN in equal beta-weighted dollars over 6-12 months. UBER has optionality on AV demand aggregation with limited manufacturing exposure, while RIVN faces execution, funding, warranty, and fleet-residual-value risk; cover the short if Rivian discloses binding, attractively priced fleet economics with third-party financing.
• Do not underwrite the announced vehicle arrangement as meaningful UBER earnings upside until disclosures quantify per-trip platform take rate, fleet ownership, minimum purchase commitments, and capital deployment. Set an alert for any increase in UBER capex or committed investment that implies a shift toward balance-sheet fleet ownership.
• For tactical exposure, consider a defined-risk UBER call spread dated 6-9 months out only after an earnings-related selloff that is driven by revenue presentation rather than deterioration in bookings, take rate, or EBITDA. The thesis is a normalization of sentiment; invalidate if management guides to materially slower bookings growth or autonomous partners launch scaled competing consumer apps in core U.S. markets.