Uber Technologies Inc.’s business continued to recover in the first quarter as COVID-19 restrictions eased, and the sale of its self-driving unit helped produce the smallest quarterly loss in its history as a public company.
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“Uber is starting to fire on all cylinders, as more consumers are riding with us again while continuing to use our expanding delivery offerings,” Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement.
The San Francisco-based company reported a net loss of $108 million, or 6 cents a share, compared with a loss of $2.9 billion, or 1.06 a share, in the year-ago period. Its net loss benefited from a $1.6 billion gain from divesting ATG, its autonomous vehicle business, Uber disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Adjusted Ebitda loss was $359 million, and revenue fell to $2.9 billion from $3.25 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet on average had forecast a loss of 56 cents a share on revenue of $3.27 billion. Uber’s lowest quarterly loss as a public company until Wednesday was $887 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to FactSet records.
Gross bookings rose 24% year over year to a record $19.5 billion, an all-time high. Analysts had expected $18.08 billion. Delivery gross bookings climbed to $12.5 billion, beating analysts’ expectations of $10.97 billion. Mobility (rides) gross bookings fell to $6.8 billion year over year, while analysts expected $7.17 billion.
Regulatory concerns have weighed on gig companies’ stock lately. Shares of Uber are up less than 0.5% year to date, and about 84% in the past 52 weeks, compared with Lyft Inc.’s
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