Uber's Ride-Sharing Business Is Booming. Why the Stock Market Couldn't Care Less. -- Barrons.com

By Kit Norton

Uber Technologies' ride-sharing business is as healthy as can be with the company reporting 22% growth in bookings for the second quarter. But Wall Street doesn't seem to care. Instead, it's giving all its attention to Uber's autonomous vehicle business plans.

There wasn't anything necessarily wrong with Uber's second-quarter earnings report and quarterly guidance that were issued Wednesday. They weren't exciting, but they weren't bad either.

Uber posted adjusted earnings of 81 cents a share for the second quarter, up from 63 cents a year ago and slightly above estimates of 80 cents. Revenue rose 12% to $14.2 billion, in-line with the analyst consensus call for $14.23 billion, according to FactSet.

Uber's gross bookings, which tracks the value of all rides and deliveries, grew 24% to $58.02 billion, above Wall Street's $57.23 billion view. Along with beating analysts' expectation, Uber also topped the high-end of its own guidance.

For the third quarter, Uber forecasts adjusted earnings between 84 cents and 88 cents a share, below the consensus expectation at the midpoint. The company sees third-quarter gross bookings of $58.25 billion to $60.25 billion. At the midpoint that's $59.25 billion, slightly below Wall Street's forecast of $59.33 billion in gross bookings for the current quarter.

Uber stock dropped 4.9% to $68.46 on Monday as it seemed Wall Street might be looking for something more spectacular -- Uber's long-term prospects around its autonomous vehicle, or AV, business.

Uber rival Lyft declined 0.7% and Tesla, which also has a robo-taxi segment, fell 0.5%.

While Uber doesn't have its own self-driving vehicles, it has positioned itself as an aggregator of supply and demand for AVs. The company added partners such as Rivian Automotive and Amazon.com-owned Zoox in the first quarter.

But CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's comments Wednesday about autonomous ride-hailing didn't seem to hit the mark for Wall Street.

Khosrowshahi said the highly regulated nature of autonomous vehicles means the service must be deployed market by market, making commercialization a key hurdle.

"That's exactly the opportunity we're building towards. Our ambition is straightforward to become the world's leading commercialization platform for autonomous vehicles," Khosrowshahi. "We're executing with discipline today while building the capabilities we believe will define Uber's next decade of growth."

Uber currently has autonomous driving services in seven cities and management said Wednesday it's on track to "be live" in 15 cities by the end of 2026.

So, nothing bad, but nothing spectacular from Uber. This market seems to be looking for the remarkable.

Write to Kit Norton at kit.norton@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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August 05, 2026 09:48 ET (13:48 GMT)