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Uber made $1.1bn last year, the first time it has made a profit since it became a public company in 2019.
The ride-hailing app firm has lost money year after year since then, and faced a loss of $1.8bn in its 2022 figures. However, it has managed to squeeze out a profit in its final year as a private company.
Uber faced a rough few years following its 2019 initial public offering (IPO). Morgan Stanley was appointed as its lead underwriter and initially valued the firm at $120bn. But the share price collapsed in the months following the IPO, and a year after the flotation its value had halved.
The firm then faced major pandemic-driven losses, and one of its lead developers on autonomous vehicles, Anthony Levandowski, was convicted of trade theft after fronting a similar initiative at Google. He ended up with an 18-month prison sentence, although he was pardoned by Donald Trump in his last day in office.
A major data leak in 2022 exposed how Uber had courted political leaders in several countries to relax labour and taxi laws, thwart law enforcement investigations and exploit violence against drivers to support its global expansion.
But the latest profit announcement suggests that many of Uber’s woes are now behind it, and the share price has more than doubled over the course of 2024.
“2023 was an inflection point for Uber, proving that we can continue to generate strong, profitable growth at scale,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO. “Our audiences are larger and more engaged than ever, with our platform powering an average of nearly 26 million daily trips last year.”
Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, the firm’s CFO, said: “Uber’s platform advantages and disciplined investment in new growth opportunities resulted in record engagement and accelerating gross bookings in Q4.”
In addition to a 22% increase in gross bookings over 2024, the firm saw a 15% rise in revenues and a $794m year-over-year increase in income. Customers booked roughly 2.6 billion trips during the last three months of 2023, or about 28 million a day.
Since the pandemic, Uber has focused on cutting costs and building up its food-delivery division, Uber Eats, which has since become a major source of revenue. The ride-hailing service has also gradually recovered since facing major pandemic-led blows in 2020.
