MW Uber's stock falls in the face of its 'strongest quarter ever.' Here's why.

By Emily Bary

The ride-hailing company faces stiff pressure from the strong U.S. dollar, which is weighing on its forecast for the current quarter

Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the company just had its "strongest quarter ever." But that doesn't seem enough to help Uber's stock early Wednesday, and the ride-hailing giant fell short because of a portion of its outlook.

Shares of Uber $(UBER)$ are down more than 6% in Wednesday's premarket trading.

Uber posted a series of beats for the fourth quarter, including revenue of $12.0 billion, up 20% from a year earlier and ahead of the $11.8 billion consensus view. Additionally, the company saw 18% growth in gross bookings, a metric that tracks the dollar value of rides and orders made through Uber's platform. Gross bookings amounted to $44.2 billion, while analysts tracked by FactSet were modeling $43.5 billion.

Uber said that trips, gross bookings and monthly active platform customers all showed accelerating growth in the fourth quarter.

The company's outlook for this quarter's gross bookings, though, trailed expectations at the midpoint. Uber models $42.0 billion to $43.5 billion on the metric, whereas analysts had been projecting $43.5 billion. Uber anticipates it will feel the sting of a strong U.S. dollar, as the company projects gross bookings for the first quarter will reflect a 5.5-percentage-point negative impact from currency.

Other multinational companies, including Alphabet Inc. $(GOOG)$ $(GOOGL)$, Meta Platforms Inc. $(META)$ and Microsoft Corp. $(MSFT)$ have warned about foreign-exchange headwinds when setting their own first-quarter expectations.

Uber also forecasts $1.79 billion to $1.89 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the first quarter, whereas analysts were looking for $1.85 billion.

While Uber shares enjoyed a huge run during 2023, the stock has treaded water more recently and is up just 1% over the past 12 months. One issue that's weighed on the stock is the progress Alphabet's Waymo has made in the robotaxi realm.

See also: Tesla is acting like an AI stock. Should investors focus more on auto trends?

Khosrowshahi said in the earnings release that Uber's performance "has been powered by rapid innovation and execution across multiple priorities, including the massive opportunity presented by autonomous vehicles."

Meanwhile, Uber flagged that in January it entered into a $1.5 billion accelerated-share-repurchase agreement, part of a $7.0 billion buyback authorization that the company had previously announced.

"We believe we remain undervalued despite these strong fundamentals, and plan to be active and opportunistic buyers of our stock," Chief Financial Officer Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah said in the release.

-Emily Bary

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February 05, 2025 07:27 ET (12:27 GMT)

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