Uber has unveiled its quarterly results for the period from October to December 2021. Good news for the American giant: after a mixed third quarter, it is finally recovering from a very difficult period during which it has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
An 83% increase in revenue
Uber recorded revenues of $5.8 billion, an increase of 83% compared to the last quarter of 2020, which allowed it to do better than analysts’ predictions. As the pandemic slowed, people started going out again: ride bookings were up 67% compared to the same period a year earlier. Similarly, the profits generated by Uber Eats, a real spare wheel for Uber in the worst hours of the crisis, continued to grow (+34%).
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The firm ended the quarter with a total of 119 million active users, a record. It also claims to have added 325,000 drivers and couriers to its platform in the fourth quarter of 2021, bringing the total number to 4.4 million worldwide. Another marker of the recovery following the pandemic period, reservations at airports represented 13% of Uber’s reservations in the mobility sector. This represents an increase of 24% compared to the third quarter, and almost 200% compared to the same period last year.
Race bookings have largely increased, a sign of recovery from the crisis caused by the pandemic. Photography: Paul Hanaoka / Unsplash
Uber’s investments play a big role in its financial results
As reported by New York Timesthe company posted its profitable second quarter as a public company, earning $892 million largely from its investments in Grab, the Southeast Asian super app that went public in December, and Aurora, the start-up specializing in autonomous vehicles.
Over the same period in 2020, Uber lost $968 million, while it reported a staggering loss of $2.4 billion in the third quarter of 2021, notably due to its investment in Chinese company Didi Chuxing. Uber also specifies that its various investments will probably continue to cause its profits and losses to fluctuate; it also plans to separate from its stake in Didi, under the blow of many setbacks in the Middle Kingdom.
” Our results demonstrate how far we have come since the start of the pandemic. While the Omicron variant started impacting our business in late December, mobility is already starting to rebound said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. Over the full year of 2021, the company’s revenue jumped 57%.
The Omicron spectrum is there
Precisely because of the Omicron variant, Uber expects its gross bookings, i.e. the total value of bookings made on its platform, to reach $26 billion in the first quarter of 2022, which is slightly less than analysts’ predictions.
For its part, Uber’s big competitor across the Atlantic, Lyft, saw its revenues increase by 70% in the last quarter of 2021 compared to the previous year, but deplores the negative impact of the Omicron variant on its performance. The transport sector is directly dependent on the health situation, so we can expect Uber’s results to reflect the latter: the fewer the restrictions and contaminations, the better the American company should perform. carry.