Uber’s net loses rise to $1.16 billion for quarter

Ride-hailing leader's sales climb, but firm continues to bleed money

Ride-hailing giant Uber released its earnings Monday, and as expected, it lost even more money during the third quarter of the year.

After U.S. stock markets closed, San Francisco-based Uber turned in a net loss $1.16 billion for the three months that ended September. While the company continued to bleed money, Uber still managed to trim its losses from the $5.24 billion it lost during the second quarter of the year. For all of 2019 so far Uber has lost more than $7 billion.

Most of Uber’s losses are tied to its efforts to expand its businesses such as Uber Eats, Uber Freight, research and development and its advanced technologies group, which includes selfdriving car technologies. Its rides business, however, remained Uber’s one profitable area, with adjusted earnings of $631 million.

“(It was) another quarter with more than a billion in losses, but I’m unsure why anyone would be surprised by that, “said Clement Thibault, an analyst who covers Uber for financial markets platform Investing.com. “Uber has done nothing but log losses so far, and this report doesn’t change neither the bull nor the bear thesis on the company.”

Gross bookings, which include what customers pay before items such as driver’s pay are taken into account, and which are one of the key measures of Uber’s business health, was a mixed bag for the company. Uber said gross bookings rose by 29% from a year ago, to $16.47 billion, but that figure also fell shy of the $16.7 billion expected by Wall Street analysts.

Excluding one-time items, Uber lost 68 cents a share, compared to $2.21 a share in the same period a year ago. Total revenue rose by 30% to $3.81 billion. Revenue from rides made up $2.9 billion of the company’s total sales.

Thibault, of Investing.com, said that despite

Uber’s overall sales rising, there’s no escaping the fact that losses are going to color the company’s story for some time to come.

“If the bottom line is what you’re interested in, it’s pretty clear you’ll see nothing but red for at least another couple of years,” Thibault said.

Uber’s report came out two days before what

could be a wild day of the stock market for Uber’s shares. On Wednesday, a restriction on selling shares tied to Uber’s initial public stock offering will lift, and some analysts have estimated that as much as 80% of Uber’s outstanding shares could be available to go on sale.

In after-hours trading, Uber’s shares gave up more than 5%, to fall to $29.39.