Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 17th, 2024.
Adam Galici | CNBC
Uber reported first-quarter results on Wednesday that came in slightly above analysts’ estimates for revenue, but the ridesharing company posted an unexpected net loss.
Shares fell more than 6% in premarket trading Wednesday.
Here’s how the company did:
Loss per share: 32 cents. That may not compare with the 23 cent earnings expected by LSEG
Revenue: $10.13 billion vs. $10.11 billion expected by LSEG
Uber’s revenue grew 15% in its first quarter from $8.82 billion a year prior. The company reported $37.65 billion in gross bookings for the period, which is short of the $37.93 billion expected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
The company’s net loss widened to $654 million, or a 32 cent loss per share, from a loss of $157 million, or an 8 cent loss per share, in the same quarter last year. Uber said its net loss includes a $721 million net headwind from unrealized losses related to the reevaluation of its equity investments.
In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company’s move to a loss had “nothing to do with the operating business.”
“We did have to mark down those equity stakes that resulted in a loss,” he said. “We don’t expect that to keep happening going forward.”
However, Uber cannot predict the markets, Khosrowshahi added.
Uber reported adjusted EBITDA of $1.38 billion, up 82% year over year and slightly above the $1.31 billion expected by analysts polled by StreetAccount.
For its second quarter, Uber said it expects to report gross bookings between $38.75 billion and $40.25 billion, compared with StreetAccount estimates of $40 billion. Uber anticipates adjusted EBITDA of $1.45 billion to $1.53 billion, compared with the $1.49 billion expected by analysts.
The number of Uber’s monthly active platform consumers reached 149 million in its first quarter, up 15% year over year from 130 million. There were 2.6 billion trips completed on the platform during the period, up 21% year over year.
“Demand for Uber remains robust across our platform, supported by our improving marketplace experience, the continued shift of consumer spending from goods to services, and the secular trend towards on-demand transportation and delivery,” Khosrowshahi said in prepared remarks Wednesday.
Here’s how Uber’s largest business segments performed:
Mobility (gross bookings): $18.67 billion, up 25% year over year.
Delivery (gross bookings): $17.7 billion, up 18% year over year.
Uber’s mobility segment reported $5.63 billion in revenue, up 30% from the year earlier and 2% quarter over quarter. StreetAccount analysts were expecting $5.52 billion. Uber said “business model changes” negatively impacted its mobility revenue margin by 180 basis points during the period.
“To drive user growth and win more of their daily trips, we are focused on increasing our penetration of core use cases, while also expanding into new consumer segments,” Khosrowshahi said in his prepared remarks.
The company’s delivery segment reported $3.21 billion in revenue, up 4% from the year prior and 3% quarter over quarter. Analysts were expecting $3.28 billion, according to StreetAccount. Uber said its delivery revenue margin was negatively impacted by 230 basis points due to “business model changes” in the first quarter.
The company’s freight business booked $1.28 billion in sales for the quarter, a decrease of 8% year over year and flat quarter over quarter.
Uber will hold its quarterly call with investors at 8:00 a.m. ET.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday that the company’s U.S. operations will be housed in a new joint venture.
The entity is named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo sent by Chew and obtained by CNBC. As part of the joint venture, Chew said the company has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said that the deal’s “closing date” is Jan. 22.
Under a national security law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January, China-based ByteDance was required to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban in the country. In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal that would keep TikTok operational in the U.S. by meeting the requirements of a law originally signed by former President Joe Biden.
Chew noted that the new TikTok joint venture would be “majority owned by American investors, governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”
The U.S. joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each. Just over 30% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance, and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.
The TikTok chief said the entity will be responsible for protecting U.S. data, ensuring the security of its prized algorithm, content moderation and “software assurance.” He added that the joint venture will “have the exclusive right and authority to provide assurances that content, software, and data for American users is secure.”
In addition to being an investor, Oracle will serve as the “trusted security partner” in charge of auditing and validating that it complies with “agreed upon National Security Terms,” the memo said. Sensitive U.S. data will be stored in Oracle’s U.S.-based cloud computing data centers, Chew wrote.
The new TikTok entity will also be tasked with retraining the video app’s core content recommendation algorithm “on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said.
Chew noted that TikTok global U.S. entities “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”
Under Trump’s executive order in September, the attorney general was blocked from enforcing the national security law for a 120-day period in order to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed,” allowing the deal to finalize by Jan 23.
The VC arms of Google and Nvidia have invested in Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable’s $330 million Series B at a $6.6 billion valuation, the company announced on Thursday.
The news confirms an earlier story from CNBC, which reported on Tuesday that Lovable had raised at that valuation, trebling its valuation from its previous round in July, and that the investors included U.S. VC firms Accel and Khosla Ventures.
CapitalG, one of Google’s VC divisions, and Menlo Ventures led the round. Alongside Accel and Khosla, Nvidia venture arm NVentures, actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s VC firm Kinship Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, T.Capital, Hubspot Ventures, DST Global, EQT Global, Creandum and Evantic also participated.
The fresh funds take Lovable’s total raised in 2025 to over $500 million.
“Lovable has done something rare: built a product that enterprises and founders both love,” said Laela Sturdy, managing partner at CapitalG in a statement accompanying the announcement.
“The demand we’re seeing from Fortune 500 companies signals a fundamental shift in how software gets built.”
Lovable’s platform uses AI models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic to help users build apps and websites using text prompts, without technical knowledge of coding.
The startup reported $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in November, just under a year after achieving $1 million in ARR for the first time. It was founded in 2023 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin.
Vibe coding startups have seen big interest from VCs in recent times, as investors bet on their promise of drastically reducing the time it takes to create software and apps.
In the U.S., Anysphere, which created coding tool Cursor, raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation in November. In September, Replit hit a $3 billion price tag after picking up $250 million and Vercel closed a $300 million round at a $9.3 billion valuation.
During an earnings call with analysts, Micron, which makes memory storage used for computers and artificial intelligence servers, said data center needs have fueled greater demand for its products.
Micron said it expects the total addressable market for high-bandwidth memory to hit $100 billion by 2028, growing at a 40% compounded annual growth rate. Management also upped its capital expenditures guidance to $20 billion from $18 billion.
“We are more than sold out,” said business chief Sumit Sadana. “We have a significant amount of unmet demand in our models and this is just consistent with an environment where the demand is substantially higher than supply for the foreseeable future.
Micron topped Wall Street estimates for the fiscal first quarter and issued blowout guidance.
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The company reported adjusted earnings of $4.78 per share on $13.64 billion in revenue, surpassing LSEG estimates for earnings of $3.95 per share and $12.84 billion in sales.
Revenues in the current quarter are expected to hit about $18.70 billion, blowing past the $14.20 billion expected by LSEG. Adjusted earnings are forecast to reach $8.42, versus expectations of $4.78 per share.
JPMorgan upped its price target on the stock following the results, citing the favorable pricing setup, while Bank of America upgraded shares to a buy rating.
Morgan Stanley called the results the best revenue and net income upside in the “history of the U.S. semis industry” outside of Nvidia.
“If AI keeps growing as we expect, we believe that the next 12 months are going to have broader coat tails to the AI trade than just the processor names and memory would be the biggest beneficiary,” analysts wrote.