Uber Technologies Q1 2025 Earnings Report

Uber Technologies EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.83
• Consensus EPS: $0.50
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.33
• One Year Ago EPS: -$0.32

Uber Technologies Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $11.53 billion
• Expected Revenue: $11.61 billion
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$79.15 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +13.80%

Uber Technologies Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2025
• Date: 5/7/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, May 7, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 8:00AM ET

Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) is a technology company that operates a global platform connecting riders, drivers, couriers, restaurants and shippers. Founded in 2009 by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick and headquartered in San Francisco, Uber developed one of the first large-scale ride-hailing marketplaces and has since expanded into a broader set of mobility and logistics services. The company completed its initial public offering in 2019 and continues to position its app-based network as a multi-modal transportation and delivery platform.

Uber’s principal businesses include mobility services (ride-hailing and shared rides), delivery through Uber Eats, and freight logistics via Uber Freight. The company also offers micromobility options such as electric bikes and scooters in select markets and maintains enterprise-focused services like Uber for Business and healthcare transportation programs. In addition, Uber has invested in advanced technologies related to mapping and autonomy, while partnering with local operators and third-party providers to extend its service footprint and capabilities.

Uber operates across a large number of cities and regions worldwide, with a strong presence in North America, Latin America, Europe and parts of the Asia-Pacific region, though it has modified its market footprint over time through strategic exits, sales or local partnerships. Dara Khosrowshahi has served as chief executive officer since 2017, leading a period of corporate restructuring and renewed focus on profitability and regulatory engagement. The company continues to evolve its product mix and market strategy in response to competition, regulatory environments and changing mobility patterns.

Uber Technologies Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Uber’s audience grew 14% year-over-year to 170 million monthly active users, with trips up 18% and retention rates at all-time highs.
• In Q1, Uber generated a record $1.9 billion adjusted EBITDA (up 35% YoY) and $2.3 billion free cash flow, marking its strongest quarter to date.
• Delivery margins expanded to 3.7% of gross bookings (up 70 bps YoY), with grocery & retail now contributing positive variable margins and incremental delivery margins at 9%.
• Uber launched Waymo AV service in Austin with ~100 cars at top-quartile utilization, announced five new autonomous partnerships and integrated with OpenTable and Delta SkyMiles.
• The Q2 outlook anticipates sustained strong top-line growth alongside even faster profitability gains, positioning Uber for a seasonally stronger second half of the year.

Presentation

[Operator]

Welcome to the Uber First Quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, press star one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Balaji Krishnamurthy, Vice President, Strategic Finance and Investor Relations. You may begin.

[Balaji Krishnamurthy, VP of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations at Uber]

Thank you, Operator. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to Uber's First Quarter 2025 earnings presentation. On the call today, we have Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. 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. 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. We do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today, except as required by law.

[Balaji Krishnamurthy, VP of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations at Uber]

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 risks and uncertainties described in our most recent Form 10-K and in our other filings made with the SEC. We published our quarterly earnings press release, prepared remarks, and supplemental slides to 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.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Thanks, Balaji. We're off to a strong start this year against a dizzying backdrop of headlines on trade and economic policy. Each component of our multi-year growth framework is humming. Our audience grew 14% to 170 million monthly active consumers. Engagement strength continued with trips up 18% and with retention rates hitting all-time highs globally. Gross bookings grew in line with trips, fueled by strength across both mobility and delivery. We see this as robust, healthy growth, growth that's coming from engagement and frequency, not just price. We think that's the right way to maximize long-term free cash flow per share. In Q1, we generated a record adjusted EBITDA of $1.9 billion, up 35% year-on-year, and free cash flow of $2.3 billion. The Uber team has been in major execution mode. We launched with Waymo in Austin with around 100 cars that are all exceptionally utilized.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We announced five AV partnerships with deployments to come in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East. We signed a partnership with OpenTable to integrate dining, delivery, and transportation for our customers. We went live with our Delta SkyMiles partnership. We announced the acquisition of Trendyol Go to supercharge our future growth in Turkey. That is all just in the last two months. Looking ahead, our Q2 outlook should underscore our expectation to reliably deliver more of the same strong top-line growth combined with even stronger profitability growth, setting us well for the seasonally stronger second half of the year. As I've said to my team, I feel great about where we stand. We're on solid footing with a clear strategy and ambitions that have never been higher. That is why I'm emphasizing that good is not going to be good enough.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We need to be great to continue to deliver for the people and cities that we serve, and of course, for all of you. Let's get some questions going.

[Balaji Krishnamurthy, VP of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations at Uber]

Thank you. Operator, we're ready.

[Operator]

Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

[Doug Anmuth, Managing Director and Internet Analyst at JPMorgan]

As far as taking questions. I have two. First, just on mobility, as you've worked to keep prices low, curious what kind of elasticity you think you're seeing in terms of the response and how that's showing up in rides. Then on AV, you talked about almost 100 cars in Austin on the way to hundreds. What are you seeing there in terms of utilization of those Waymos relative to some of their other markets? Thanks.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah, absolutely. Doug, on mobility, the elasticity that we're seeing is similar to the past. Usually, for a dollar of increase in terms of price, transactions are negatively affected. Now, there's short-term elasticity and long-term elasticity. There's elasticity that you see in session. We think there's longer-term elasticity, which is as you tend to kind of get used to prices not increasing as much as they were in the past couple of years, how do your habits change, how does sessioning change? We're happy with the results that we saw in terms of the pricing that we were able to deliver to the consumers as we saw the insurance headwinds ease a little bit. Hopefully, we'll keep that going.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

There was also kind of a mixed shift in terms of trips, a bit more growth internationally than the U.S., especially in the travel sector, that affected overall price mix, so to speak. So far, I'd say so good in terms of elasticity. In terms of AV in Austin, we're very, very encouraged with what we're seeing. Obviously, Waymo has a safety track record second to none. Consumers are loving the product. Option rates are very, very healthy, and the ratings are healthy. The team on the ground is doing a terrific job in terms of repairs and cleaning and recharging the cars, etc., to make sure that the Waymos are available for rides. When the Waymos are available for rides, they are very, very busy. We are seeing very high utilization of the vehicles in terms of trips per vehicle per day.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

As a matter of fact, the average Waymo in Austin is busier than 99% of Austin drivers, as defined by kind of the number of trips per day per Waymo as well. Very, very encouraging early days. We are going to continue to increase the vehicle count in Austin, and we're super excited for expansion in Atlanta, as well as some of the other AV announcements that we've made on the expansion that we see both in the U.S. and especially outside the U.S. as well.

[Doug Anmuth, Managing Director and Internet Analyst at JPMorgan]

Thank you, Dara.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

You're welcome. Next question.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Eric Sheridan, Partner and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Thank you so much for taking my question. Want to know if we could go a little bit deeper on the broader competitive landscape. If you could give us a bit of an update on what you're seeing competitively, especially around either pricing dynamics or incenting supply and demand across both mobility and delivery, and if there were any specific GOs you wanted to call out from a competitive intensity standpoint. Thank you.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah, Eric, these markets continue to be very competitive on a global basis. In terms of mobility, we've got a strong competitor domestically here in Lyft. I think we're more focused on competing with each other on service, on quality. Obviously, insurance is something that's hit both of us as well. I'd say the competitive intensity in the U.S. is pretty consistent. Internationally, of course, we've got Bolt in Europe and DiDi in Latin America. They're strong competitors. They continue to focus on expansion. I think as you see by our results, we're the number one player in the vast majority of markets in which we operate. Even in a very competitive market, our category position continues to be market-leading. The same in delivery as well. Obviously, the U.S. market is highly competitive.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We're seeing terrific growth, both in terms of top line, in terms of margin, in terms of our grocery and retail business that accelerated this quarter versus last quarter. You are seeing some consolidation in the sector, in the food delivery sector. We were early to the game in terms of growing internationally organically. We're seeing some consolidation happening, inorganic consolidation happening. That is to be expected in markets that are as large and as competitive as ours. I'd say no change. We can't rest for a second. Because of our global position and because of the unique platform that we have, we think we can hold our own and then some.

[Eric Sheridan, Partner and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Thank you.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

You're welcome. Next question.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

[Brian Nowak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, one on Austin and one on U.S. mobility. Just going back to Austin, Dara, can you sort of walk us through how you're thinking about a size of a fleet or an internal timeline or target when Austin Waymo combined with Austin human drivers could sort of better be matched supply-demand to drive incremental volumes to Uber overall? When do you think that could happen? The second one, maybe just kind of drilling a little more into U.S. mobility. Any update on sort of how quickly U.S. mobility is growing and sort of how the suburbs versus the more urban areas are trending? Thanks.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah, Brian, in terms of Austin, we're really focused on making sure that the experience every single day is an excellent experience. We're absolutely growing the fleets. It's going to be over 100 vehicles soon based on the trends that we're seeing. Really, the focus is on keeping the utilization of the vehicles at the high levels that we're seeing and making sure that safety and customer experience aren't compromised in any way. At this point, our goal in Austin isn't necessarily for incremental trips one way or the other. It's just to make sure that every single ride is the perfect ride.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

What we see over the long term is if we provide a service that is highly reliable, where every single trip is exceptional, prices are reasonable, ETAs are predictable, then over a period of time, the business grows and we are able to gain category position. We see more consumers kind of coming onto our platform. The fact is that less than 20% of adults 18 and over use our platform on a regular basis. We think there's plenty of room for growth. The focus right now is kind of day-to-day making sure we get it right and making sure that the streets of Austin are safe. Can I talk to the second question?

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Yeah, Brian its Prashanth. I'll take the second part. That was on mobility growth. Maybe let's set some context. For the last couple of quarters, I think three quarters now, we've had about 19% year-over-year trip growth. Very strong trip growth. As we look at what we've incorporated into the guide, we're thinking that it should be around the same and that we're fortunate it's still very heavily led by audience growth. When we look at that conversion from trip growth to GB growth, we are starting to see the gap between trips and gross bookings narrow a bit because we've been able to pass along lower insurance costs, primarily here in the U.S. You might remember we indicated that in the latter part of the year that we would expect better insurance costs in this year, and that's exactly how it's turning out.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

The other item that Dara made mention of earlier in one of his answers is we are seeing a slightly higher mix of international trips. That is a bit due to that lower inbound U.S. travel, which comes with lower gross bookings per trip. Despite sort of this mix shift, you'll notice that we were able to print all-time high margins for the quarter. We are able to really continue to pass those insurance costs through. There is no economic impact of that to our shareholders, and we are able to put the margins and continue to show that sort of margin accretion story. Lastly, I think you asked a bit about growth in the suburbs versus the urbans.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

A metric that we're now able to share is that sparser markets, which are growing at a faster rate than our core, represent about 20% on a trip basis for mobility. We are continuing to see great growth in those sparser markets because it's growing faster, but it's also a sizable percentage of the overall mobility volume.

[Brian Nowak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley]

Great. Thank you both.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

We'll move to the next question, Operator.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler with Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Ross Sandler, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays]

Great. Just a question on the delivery margin and a callout you guys made in the prepared remarks. You said that restaurant delivery has profit margins that are modestly lower than UberX profit margins. That is an interesting nugget in itself. I guess the question is, looking at that, what does that say about the cadence of margin expansion at grocery and retail? I think you also said that that part is at a 2018 kind of equivalent maturity. Then how much of the restaurant margin being way up there is because of advertising, just because of time and market and the usual kind of retention cadence, etc.? Any thoughts on that?

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Sure. Thank you, Ross its Prashanth. I'll go ahead and take that. Delivery has been a pretty incredible profit story for us. If you look at the results for the quarter, delivery margins are at 3.7% of GBs. That's up 70 basis points versus where it was just a year ago. Very strong expansion. That margin expansion is primarily being driven by advertising and the leverage we're getting just from the scale, the OPEX leverage that we get from scale. That's been a fairly consistent driver of what's been behind the margin expansion over the last couple of quarters. The item that I'd probably highlight there is that our cost per trip continues to show great improvement. That's the benefit of the scale we have. It's declined both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

In the delivery profitability numbers, that includes our grocery and retail, which you made reference to. Remember that we said in Q4 of last year, grocery and retail hit break-even for variable contribution. In Q1, it's now starting to accrete at variable contribution levels. That grocery and retail business has great upside, and it's going to continue to grow both as a result of advertising, but also as we continue to improve selection. I will call out one item that may not be notable to everyone is incremental margins for delivery. In Q1, we're 9%. With that very strong top-line growth, it's a reflection of what just the earnings power of this business can be with continuing to see that opportunity to drive margin expansion.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Having said that, as we've said consistently in our calls, we need to always find a balance between growing profitability and growing the top line. I don't want to overcommit to the growth in delivery profitability. We're looking for steady margin expansion so we can continue to invest in growing the top line of the business, given that we have so many opportunities to invest in. Next question, please.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Mahaney with Evercore. Please go ahead.

[Mark Mahaney, Senior Managing Director at Evercore]

Okay. Thanks. I'll try too. First, just on the insurance headwinds, do you feel like that's mostly behind you now? Just talk about where you think ongoing leverage against insurance costs are. Is that something that's kind of structural to the industry, or are those things kind of workarounds or improvements that you've been able to do? Dara, in terms of AV partners, and you've got a pretty good view on all the different offerings that are out there. Waymo's doing a fantastic job. Who do you think is coming? Who do you think in the marketplace is closest to Waymo now in terms of having the ability to roll out at a decent scale a true AV experience? Thanks.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Dara, why don't you take the Waymo one first, and then I'll close with insurance?

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah, sure. Mark, it's hard to tell exactly who has what capability because AV is still very, very early in terms of its development. I'll tell you that, listen, in China, you have AV product that is in market today from WeRide, who's a partner in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and expanding in 15 countries. Pony, whom we expect to introduce to the Middle East sometime, and Baidu as well. They have essentially AVs running in Chinese cities right now. Very challenging traffic conditions and conditions generally. There are a lot of other players that are showing incredible promise as well. We announced a partnership with May Mobility, with VW, with Momenta as well, where we expect to see an AV deployment in Europe as well, and Avride. This is a technology that has been proven.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Waymo is definitely the leader there, but there are many other players investing in the space, and we expect to see a number of successful companies in the space hopefully partnering with us.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Yeah. Mark, on the insurance question, if you remember in Q4 of last year, we indicated that for 2025, we thought insurance increases would moderate and more likely be in the high single, perhaps low teens area. We actually overestimated it. CPI print for March was coming in at 7% year-over-year, and that's the lowest we've seen in almost three years. As we think about our U.S. mobility insurance cost expectations for the balance of the year, we're thinking that it will continue to be a very modest headwind of high single digits through 2025, and that is meaningfully lower than we've seen in the last two years. Certainly, given the rate of growth for the US mobility business, that's going to create some leverage for us. As I said in my prior response, we intend to pass those opportunities on to consumers.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Now, where we are getting some incremental strength from the great efforts of our team are in a few areas. First, on safety tech, some great innovation that we're driving in this space, including giving our drivers insight into how their driving behavior is being scored. That is now live in all U.S. markets, and drivers are responding very favorably to being able to understand their actions like speeding, harsh braking, acceleration, etc. That is one element that we've now deployed across the U.S. On the policy side, which has also been an area that we've been talking about for a while, we're getting some great momentum there. For example, just in this first quarter, a tort reform bill is in Georgia awaiting the governor's signature.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

If we get through that, that's going to be a meaningful step to combat some of the legal system abuse and is going to help us continue to drive down insurance costs over time. We have other bills in other states like Nevada and Texas and continue to have some good discussions in other areas. Overall, I think that the energy that we're spending on insurance, both because we have a captive that allows us to create tension on pricing, we have an organization of engineers that's really working on finding new technologies, and the efforts that we're doing on the policy side are going to continue to make this a more favorable situation for us than it has been over the past couple of years.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Mark, I just stress on the policy angle that U.S. drivers are not less safe than drivers internationally. The cost of insurance that has to be paid on to consumers outside of the U.S. is de minimis compared to the US. This is just a huge part of the inflation that consumers are experiencing. We're hoping that local policymakers and the administration in place want to fight inflation as much as we do because really this inflation is caused by abuse of the legal system. It's entirely unnecessary. We're hoping that policymakers can work with us to bring prices down for consumers and more of the fares going into the driver's pockets. That we really think is a win-win.

[Mark Mahaney, Senior Managing Director at Evercore]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

You're welcome.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Justin Post, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Great. Thanks. Just like a question on the macro, you mentioned maybe slower airport trips, but any impact on mobility rides or pricing or delivery, slower AOVs or anything like that on the macro or contemplated going forward? Can you give us an update on competition in Bay Area and San Francisco? Sorry, Bay Area and L.A. I know those are areas where Waymo's operating. Just any update on the competition there? Thank you.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of macro, Justin, we're watching it pretty closely. We don't see any signals that I'd describe as significant. Audience growth is very consistent with last quarter, up 14%. Frequency is consistent as well. We are looking to modulate price increases, and you saw that in our results as well. We're not seeing basket sizes continue to increase. I think that would be a leading indicator to the extent that there was macro uncertainty. We're not seeing trade downs in terms of the kinds of restaurants that our eaters are eating at. It is absolutely something that we're watching, but we don't see any signal as of yet in terms of the consumer. Remember, the categories that we operate in, these are restaurants, transportation, grocery, tend to be categories that are quite consistent even during periods of macro uncertainty.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

I think from a relative standpoint, we're a little bit less subject to these issues, but right now, we don't see any signal whatsoever, and hopefully, it'll remain the same. You kind of see that in the guidance, which is pretty consistent in terms of top line with this quarter. In terms of San Francisco and L.A., the competitive environment, pretty stable, Justin. We're not seeing any change there. We are very supportive of Mayor Lurie's plans to kind of get San Francisco going again. We think that'll benefit all of the competitors in that marketplace.

[Justin Post, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America]

Great. Thank you.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

You're welcome. Next question.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Gawrelski with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

[Ken Gawrelski, Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Thank you. Two, if I may, please. First, maybe one for Prashanth. Given the affordability initiatives and the commentary on insurance, but also your kind of preview of the GO-GET event later this month, could you talk about the impact potentially on mobility margins in the second half of this year and beyond? Then one for Dara, please. If you could expand a little bit more about your view of the AV landscape, kind of both inside the U.S. and outside the U.S., when do you see software-enabled AV solutions as a scaled commercial option? Thank you.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Yeah, Ken. I'm reluctant to guide for the second half, but I can say this: we are committed to continuingly showing steady margin improvement on a year-over-year basis. As we've said many times, we're going to manage the P&L across both lines of businesses and striking that really tough balance of investing for growth when we have so many opportunities to invest in while continuing to drive the profitability of the company. We shared some pretty strong profit expansion in the mobility business this quarter on a sequential basis and on a year-over-year basis. I would not take that as an indicator for how you want to model the balance of year. I think that steady margin expansion throughout the cycle of this company on a year-over-year basis is how you want to model us out.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah. In terms of AV, we're seeing a ton of innovation in the marketplace that we're actually quite excited about. Generally, you see rarely, I would say, AV tech was based on heuristics, a bunch of if-thens based on different scenarios that were being built. We're seeing players like Waymo and a number of others move more and more of the heuristics logic into large transformer models to create more flexibility, better scalability, better cost, etc. Those kinds of models also have the benefit of not having to be overfit to a particular compute or hardware or sensor stacks as well. They are generalizable in terms of where they drive, and they're more generalizable in terms of the hardware kit that's necessary, the sensor kit, etc. That is all moving in the right direction as far as separating the software stack from the hardware stack.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

I think a lot of you probably saw the announcement of Waymo partnering up with Toyota. That is just indicative, we think, of where AV is going, which is you have got pure-play software developers increasingly offering more sophisticated AV platforms to the OEMs around the world. A world in which 10 years from now, every single new car sold comes with level 4, level 5 AV, we think is a terrific outcome in terms of safety for the streets and also our platform, which will allow any player, any owner of those vehicles, whether it is financial institutions, etc., to monetize those vehicles at the highest utilization so that they have got the lowest cost of capital. The direction that we are seeing is absolutely very encouraging. There are some players out there that are pure, call it next-generation large models, end-to-end models as well.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

These are the Wayve or the Waabi of the world in trucking or Momenta as well. That is a more pure AI kind of direction, which has been incredibly promising in terms of the pace of development and, again, the generalizability of the software, both in terms of where it's driving and the hardware kits as well. The innovation that we see is pretty incredible. We are obviously working with many of these partners around the world. I think we've got an excellent point of view as to who the leaders are, and you're seeing us partner with many of the leaders in the industry. Hopefully more to come. We've announced, I think, five partnerships in the past week. It is coming fast and furious, and the innovation and the development there is pretty exciting for us.

[Ken Gawrelski, Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Thank you both.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

TYou're welcome.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Shwetha Khajuria with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

[Shweta Khajuria, Managing Director of Internet Equity Research at Wolfe Research]

Thanks a lot for taking my questions off. Two on delivery, please. Dara, could you please talk about your affordability efforts in your letter? You talked to four key areas, and affordability was one of them. If you could please expand on that, that'd be great. The second is just in Europe in particular, we have seen now you have a majority stake. You just announced, and then DoorDash announced Deliveroo. Could you please talk to that market? How fast is it growing? What does the competitive landscape look like there? How do you view consolidation? Thanks a lot.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of delivery, we are very focused on affordability as it relates to delivery as well. The two efforts that I would point out, one is membership. Membership essentially is our lowering prices, no delivery fee, for example, for members and for the most loyal customers that we've got. Members tend to have higher retention. They spend three times more than non-members as well. Our membership program now with 30 million members is delivering billions of discounts, so to speak, for those members. Our penetration of membership continues to increase on delivery. It's over 60% now. In certain markets, it's at the 70%+ mark as well. We think more members, getting better deals, getting more discounts is a good thing. That's part of our business that continues to grow.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

The second area of focus that I point out are what we call merchant-funded offers. These are essentially offers that merchants can put into the system. I just enjoyed one a couple of nights ago. It's kind of buy one, get one free or other kinds of discounts. Merchants like those discounts because their cost of food isn't necessarily they get to kind of use the cost of food as the discount, and they can enjoy a margin on their food. We're seeing higher and higher percentages of merchant-funded offers in the marketplace. Merchants who put these offers into the marketplace increase their visibility in the marketplace and are able to increase their sales in the marketplace as well.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We're seeing growth in both, and we think that is partially responsible for the consistently high gross bookings growth that we're seeing in delivery, both in the U.S. and internationally as well. To your question in terms of competition, especially in Europe, we're really, really happy about our results in Europe. We recently, we believe, got to the number one category position in the U.K. with Eats. Entirely organically, we didn't have to buy our way into glory, so to speak. France remains a top market for us. We think that Germany, for example, is a market that holds a significant amount of promise. I think we launched in Germany three to four years ago, and our category position continues to increase in Germany as we invest in that market, both on the mobility and delivery side. We're seeing very encouraging trends in Europe.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Frankly, it's not a surprise to see some of our competitors look to expand there inorganically. We like organic expansion more. We've been investing for years in these marketplaces, and I think it shows in our results.

[Shweta Khajuria, Managing Director of Internet Equity Research at Wolfe Research]

Thank you, Dara. That was helpful.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

You're welcome. Next question.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Morton with SVB MoffettNathanson. Please go ahead.

[Michael Morton, Senior Research Analyst at MoffetNathanson]

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for the question. One on delivery and then one on mobility. For delivery, as we see the continued adoption of these large language models introducing shopping experiences, they seem to be preferring different retailers than, let's just say, the two giants in which we're all aware of. It seems like a natural opportunity for Uber to work in partnership with these retailers you already work with to deliver the local inventory. Dara, I was curious, any possibility of partnerships with the ChatGPTs of the world? I think one for Krishnamurthy on the sparse markets. Could you talk about the duration of this opportunity and the ability to continue offsetting some of the natural deceleration you've seen in some of your urban markets?

[Michael Morton, Senior Research Analyst at MoffetNathanson]

Maybe help investors think about the margin profile of the sparse mobility markets compared to your core kind of urban markets. Thank you so much.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Yeah. I think on delivery and large language models, we're very, very early in terms of the development of the models and their application to consumer experiences or enterprise technology. I wouldn't say that right now our focus is to kind of push volume from one merchant to the other. It's really to focus on improving the customer experience. It starts in smaller ways. For example, we're using larger models in terms of our restaurant and grocery search so that we understand more about the context of the consumer. We get to know the consumer more, and we're able to surface better results, higher quality results in terms of search, in terms of the sort order of restaurants that we're offering you or the promotions that we're offering you as well.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We absolutely are working with OpenAIs of the world and the other leading LLMs and LLM companies in terms of some of the agents that are being built and being able to offer kind of an Uber experience that is seamless and delightful that you can talk to as well. I stress that it's very, very early in experimentation phase, and we're going to be working with them to understand what the possibilities are. We have unique access to transportation inventory. We are global, obviously. We have human drivers. We have AV drivers. We have food available, grocery available. I think we're kind of the partner of choice for many of these players. Right now, the focus is how do you build consumer experiences that are delightful? How do you make every single service of ours a little bit more optimized for consumers?

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We'll deal with the aftereffects later in terms of merchant concentration. It's just not something we're focused on right now. Prashanth, do you want to take the other one?

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

I will. I'll take the second one. Thanks for the question, Michael. Maybe I could start with just a gentle correction to a comment you made about deceleration. It may surprise folks to know that the vast majority of our top 20 cities are still continuing to grow at double-digit rates. We are still seeing very strong growth in our core areas. What we do see is we see the opportunity to increase the length of time that that core business can grow at attractive rates by investing into these sparse markets. We are already seeing great indications, for example, in mobility. I think I had already mentioned that 20% of our trips are now coming from sparser markets, and those are growing even faster than the urban core.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Having said all that, I think the way to maybe capture all this is once these markets hit sort of the full investment profile and they're running well, margins are very much in line with what we see in our other markets. The rate at which we're investing is we're launching hundreds of new cities in 2025. There is plenty of room for us to run here. Obviously, there is an investment period before they achieve those more continuity-level margin profiles, but that's all part of the growth opportunities that we see in front of us.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Great. Operator, would you take the last question, please?

[Operator]

Your last question comes from the line of Nikhil Devnani with Bernstein. Please go ahead.

[Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein]

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two on mobility, please. First, how should we think about the slope of deceleration in mobility gross bookings over the next year? Q1 stepped down by several points. Maybe that's just pricing and mix given the trip growth comments. How do we get comfortable with mobility bookings not decelerating more aggressively here in the quarters to come? Separately, a follow-up on the less dense markets. Do you think the frequency opportunity in these markets is the same as your larger cities? I would imagine there's far more car ownership and some reliability differences. How do you think about the opportunity set on a frequency basis relative to your core urban centers? Thank you.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

Thanks, Nikhil. I'll start and then hand off to Dara. I think if you go back to the algorithm, it is bookings equals trips times our average price. If you look at the strong growth that we've been putting up over the last several quarters, those have all been built on top of a 19% year-over-year trip growth for the last three quarters. Our indication is that Q2 is going to be in a similar vein. The contributor to those trip growths continues to be heavily led by audience growth. That narrowing of the delta between trips and gross bookings is coming from, as I mentioned, a little bit of mix because we saw higher international mix and the favorable versus expected delta on insurance costs. We would sort of, I guess, softly let you think about balance of year gross bookings.

[Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO at Uber]

You shouldn't be looking for a deceleration. You should be looking for that trip growth to continue to be led heavily by audience growth. You will have to see where the pricing opportunities continue to be provided by insurance.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

Nikhil, I just add in terms of mobility trip growth as well, is that the base trip growth, the core trip growth, is supercharged by the growth in less dense areas as well. Some of the growth that we've had in terms of lower-cost products, two-wheelers and three-wheelers are growing incredibly quickly. Our taxi business continues to grow. We're not even close to the majority of taxis in the world. As we add more taxi supply, trip growth continues to grow and kind of extends the runway of our growth there. Of course, shared rides, both in terms of high-capacity vehicles that bring the price envelope down and/or UberX Share are products that essentially allow single driver to serve multiple riders as well. We've got a business that continues to have a lot of growth runway.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

We're expanding into new markets, both geographically, but into less dense markets. There's a whole portfolio of newer products that continue to grow faster than the core, so to speak, that have substantial runways ahead of them. In terms of frequency in the less dense areas, our less dense initiative really started with delivery. What we're seeing is that in those markets, you actually typically have families ordering, etc. The frequency that we see in delivery continues to grow in both dense markets and less dense markets. It's unclear as to whether expansion into less dense markets would hurt frequency on the delivery side. Certainly frequency continues to increase in delivery. We're very happy as it relates to those results. On mobility, I do think that you're right. People will have car ownership will be higher in suburbs, etc.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

I would expect frequency in mobility as we expand into these lower dense, less dense areas to be a headwind. I do think that price will be a tailwind, especially as it relates to Reserve. In some of these markets, people kind of use Reserve in order to drive reliability in the suburbs. About 40% of Reserve trips are now not related to travel as well. It is becoming kind of an everyday habit going out to dinner. I do think that the concentration of Reserve in these less dense markets is going to be higher than in urban markets as people are willing to pay a premium for higher reliability in these less dense markets. I do think frequency will be lower, but I think pricing and margins as it relates to product mix will be higher.

[Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein]

Thank you both.

[Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO at Uber]

All right. I think that's it, Operator, for the call. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this quarter. A huge thank you to the Uber team as well as our partners. None of this would be possible without the hard work of the team. Thank you to the team. We'll see you next quarter. Hopefully, this will be the start of a strong year for the company.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, CFO
• Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO
• Balaji Krishnamurthy, VP of Strategic Finance and Investor Relations

Analysts

• Ken Gawrelski, Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst at Wells Fargo
• Nikhil Devnani, Senior Analyst at Bernstein
• Eric Sheridan, Partner and Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
• Ross Sandler, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays
• Shweta Khajuria, Managing Director of Internet Equity Research at Wolfe Research
• Justin Post, Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America
• Doug Anmuth, Managing Director and Internet Analyst at JPMorgan
• Mark Mahaney, Senior Managing Director at Evercore
• Michael Morton, Senior Research Analyst at MoffetNathanson
• Brian Nowak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley