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SummaryEdit

Our mission is to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.

We believe deeply in our bold mission. Every minute of every day, consumers and Drivers on our platform can tap a button and get a ride or tap a button and get work. We revolutionized personal mobility with Ridesharing, and we are leveraging our platform to redefine the massive meal delivery and logistics industries. While we have had unparalleled growth at scale, we are just getting started: only 2% of the population in the 63 countries where we operate used our offerings in the quarter ended December 31, 2018, based on MAPCs.

The foundation of our platform is our massive network, leading technology, operational excellence, and product expertise. Together, these elements power movement from point A to point B.

BusinessEdit

Overview

Our mission is to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.

We believe deeply in our bold mission. Every minute of every day, consumers and Drivers on our platform can tap a button and get a ride or tap a button and get work. We revolutionized personal mobility with Ridesharing, and we are leveraging our platform to redefine the massive meal delivery and logistics industries. While we have had unparalleled growth at scale, we are just getting started: only 2% of the population in the 63 countries where we operate used our offerings in the quarter ended December 31, 2018, based on MAPCs.

The foundation of our platform is our massive network, leading technology, operational excellence, and product expertise. Together, these elements power movement from point A to point B.

  • Massive network. Our massive, efficient, and intelligent network consists of tens of millions of Drivers, consumers, restaurants, shippers, carriers, and dockless e-bikes and e-scooters, as well as underlying data, technology, and shared infrastructure. Our network becomes smarter with every trip. In over 700 cities around the world, our network powers movement at the touch of a button for millions, and we hope eventually billions, of people.
  • Leading technology. We have built proprietary marketplace, routing, and payments technologies. Marketplace technologies are the core of our deep technology advantage and include demand prediction, matching and dispatching, and pricing technologies.
  • Operational excellence. Our regional on-the-ground operations teams use their extensive market-specific knowledge to rapidly launch and scale products in cities, support Drivers, consumers, restaurants, shippers, and carriers, and build and enhance relationships with cities and regulators.
  • Product expertise. Our products are built with the expertise that allows us to set the standard for powering movement on-demand, provide platform users with a contextual, intuitive interface, continually evolve features and functionality, and deliver safety and trust.

Our Personal Mobility, Uber Eats, and Uber Freight platform offerings each address large, fragmented markets.

Personal Mobility

Our Personal Mobility offering includes Ridesharing and New Mobility. Ridesharing refers to products that connect consumers with Drivers who provide rides in a variety of vehicles, such as cars, auto rickshaws, motorbikes, minibuses, or taxis. New Mobility refers to products that provide consumers with access to rides through a variety of modes, including dockless e-bikes and e-scooters. We aim to provide everyone, everywhere on our platform with access to a safe, reliable, affordable, and convenient trip within a few minutes of tapping a button. In the quarter ended December 31, 2018, the average wait time for a rider to be picked up by a Driver was five minutes. In addition to powering movement for riders, our platform powers opportunity for Drivers, fueling the future of independent work by providing Drivers with a reliable and flexible way to earn money. We are committed to providing consumers with access to the best personal mobility options to meet their needs. We are investing in new modes of transportation that enable us to address a wider range of consumer use cases and represent a significant opportunity to bring additional trips onto our platform. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, trips of less than three miles accounted for 46% of all U.S. vehicle trips in 2017. We believe that dockless e-bikes and e-scooters address many of these use cases and will replace a portion of these vehicle trips over time, particularly in urban environments that suffer from substantial traffic during peak commuting hours.

The rapid growth and scale of our Ridesharing products, which to date have accounted for virtually all of our Personal Mobility offering, demonstrates the size of our opportunity:

  • Revenue derived from our Ridesharing products grew from $3.5 billion in 2016 to $9.2 billion in 2018.
  • Gross Bookings derived from our Ridesharing products grew from $18.8 billion in 2016 to $41.5 billion in 2018.
  • Consumers traveled 16.5 billion miles on our platform in 2018.

We believe that Personal Mobility represents a vast, rapidly growing, and underpenetrated market opportunity. We operate our Personal Mobility offering in 63 countries with an aggregate population of 4.1 billion people. Through our Personal Mobility offering, we estimate that our platform served 2% of the population in these countries based on MAPCs in the quarter ended December 31, 2018. We estimate that people traveled 4.7 trillion vehicle miles in trips under 30 miles in these countries in 2017, of which the 16.5 billion miles traveled on our platform represent less than 0.5% penetration.

We believe that our Personal Mobility market share and ridesharing category position are key indicators of our progress towards our massive market opportunity. We calculate our Personal Mobility market share in a given region by dividing our Personal Mobility miles traveled by our estimates of the addressable market in miles traveled in the region. We estimate the size of the addressable market by multiplying the number of passenger cars in each country by our country-level estimates of miles traveled per car. Our estimates also include an estimated 4.4 trillion public transportation miles, which we allocate to regions based on their share of the population in our addressable market. See the section titled “—Our Market Opportunity” for more information. Based on this estimate, our Personal Mobility market share is less than 1% in every major region of the world where we operate.

We calculate our ridesharing category position within a given region by dividing our Ridesharing Gross Bookings by our estimates of total ridesharing Gross Bookings generated by us and other companies with similar ridesharing products. We estimate our total ridesharing Gross Bookings in a given region by utilizing internal source data, including historical trip, bookings, product mix, and fare information, and external source data provided by publicly available information and marketing analytics firms. Based on these estimates, we have a leading ridesharing category position in every major region of the world where we operate, as shown in the graphic below. We also participate in certain regions through our minority-owned affiliates and intend to maintain our interests in these minority-owned affiliates to participate in the expected growth of ridesharing and other modes of personal mobility in the regions where they operate. At the time of entering into such transactions, we believed based on our internal estimates using the information then available to us that each of Didi, Grab, and Yandex.Taxi, on a pro forma basis, had the leading ridesharing category position in its respective market.

Uber Eats

Our Uber Eats offering allows consumers to search for and discover local restaurants, order a meal at the touch of a button, and have the meal delivered reliably and quickly. We launched our Uber Eats app just over three years ago, and we believe that Uber Eats has grown to be the largest meal delivery platform in the world outside of China based on Gross Bookings. We believe that our scale enables the average delivery time for Uber Eats to be faster than the average delivery time for our competitors. For the quarter ended December 31, 2018, the average delivery time was approximately 30 minutes. We believe that Uber Eats not only leverages, but also increases, the supply of Drivers on our network. For example, Uber Eats enables Ridesharing Drivers to increase their utilization and earnings by accessing additional demand for trips during non-peak Ridesharing times. Uber Eats also expands the pool of Drivers by enabling people who are not Ridesharing Drivers or who do not have access to Ridesharing-qualified vehicles to deliver meals on our platform. In addition to benefiting Drivers and consumers, Uber Eats provides restaurants with an instant mobile presence and efficient delivery capability, which we believe generates incremental demand and improves margins for restaurants by enabling them to serve more consumers without increasing their existing front-of-house expenses. Of the 91 million MAPCs on our platform, over 15 million received a meal using Uber Eats in the quarter ended December 31, 2018, tapping into our network of more than 220,000 restaurants in over 500 cities globally.

In connection with our transactions with Grab and Yandex, we contributed our meal delivery offerings in Southeast Asia and Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (“Russia/CIS”) to Grab and to our Yandex.Taxi joint venture, respectively, including our partnerships with certain significant global restaurant chains with operations in those markets. We expect to benefit from continued growth of the meal delivery industry in the regions where our minority-owned affiliates operate.

Uber Freight

We believe that Uber Freight is revolutionizing the logistics industry. Uber Freight leverages our proprietary technology, brand awareness, and experience revolutionizing industries to create a transparent, on-demand marketplace that seamlessly connects shippers and carriers.

The freight industry today is highly fragmented and deeply inefficient. It can take several hours, sometimes days, for shippers to find a truck and driver for shipments, with most of the process conducted over the phone or by fax. Procurement is highly fragmented, with traditional players relying on local or regional offices to book shipments. It is equally difficult for carriers to find and book the shipments that work for their businesses, spending hours on the phone negotiating pricing and terms. These inefficiencies adversely impact both shippers and carriers, and contribute to the number of non-revenue or “dead-head” miles, which are miles driven by carriers between shipments. According to an October 2018 survey of for-hire carriers in the United States conducted by the American Transportation Research Institute, “dead-head” miles account for approximately 20% of carrier miles driven in the United States. Uber Freight greatly reduces friction in the logistics industry by providing an on-demand platform to automate and accelerate logistics transactions end-to-end. Uber Freight connects carriers with the most appropriate shipments available on our platform, and gives carriers upfront, transparent pricing and the ability to book a shipment with the touch of a button.

We serve shippers ranging from small- and medium-sized businesses to global enterprises by enabling them to create and tender shipments with a few clicks, secure capacity on demand with upfront pricing, and track those shipments in real-time from pickup to delivery. We believe that all of these factors represent significant efficiency improvements over traditional freight brokerage providers. Since Uber Freight’s public launch in the United States in May 2017, we have contracted with over 36,000 carriers that in aggregate have more than 400,000 drivers and have served over 1,000 shippers, including global enterprises such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Niagara, Land O’Lakes, and Colgate-Palmolive. Uber Freight has grown to over $125 million in revenue for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.

In March 2019, we announced the expansion of our Uber Freight offering into Europe. Although Europe’s freight market is one of the largest and most sophisticated in the world, we believe that European shippers and carriers experience many of the same pain points in their current operations as U.S. shippers and carriers.

Platform Synergies

We intend to continue to invest in new platform offerings that we believe will further strengthen our platform and existing offerings and fuel multiple virtuous cycles of growth.

We can rapidly launch and scale platform products and offerings by leveraging our massive network, leading technology, operational excellence, and product expertise. Furthermore, each new product adds nodes to our network and strengthens these shared capabilities, enabling us to launch and invest in additional products more efficiently. For example, Uber Eats is used by many of the same consumers who use our Ridesharing products, is built on our existing technology stack, and has grown by leveraging many of the same regional operations teams that built our Ridesharing products. Similarly, in cities where we already operate, we can more efficiently launch other products and offerings, such as dockless e-bikes and e-scooters, by leveraging our existing network of Drivers and consumers and regional on-the-ground operations teams. As evidence of the power of our platform, Uber Eats grew to $2.6 billion in Gross Bookings for the quarter ended December 31, 2018, nearly three years following the launch of the Uber Eats app, which we believe makes our Uber Eats offering the largest meal delivery platform in the world outside of China. In addition, each new product or offering enables us to invest more efficiently because we share innovations and investments across our platform offerings. These synergies effectively lower our costs and allow us to invest in a scalable way that becomes increasingly efficient as we grow with each new product or offering.

Each platform offering also increases the value of our platform to platform users, enabling us to attract new platform users and to deepen engagement with existing platform users. Both of these dynamics grow our network scale and liquidity, which further increases the value of our platform to platform users. For example, Uber Eats attracts new consumers to our network – in the quarter ended December 31, 2018, 50% of first-time Uber Eats consumers were new to our platform. Additionally, in the quarter ended December 31, 2018, consumers who used both Personal Mobility and Uber Eats had 11.5 Trips per month on average, compared to 4.9 Trips per month on average for consumers who used a single offering in cities where both Personal Mobility and Uber Eats were offered. Similarly, having multiple offerings increases our engagement with Drivers. For example, with Uber Eats, Ridesharing Drivers can access additional demand for trips during non-peak Ridesharing times to increase their utilization and earnings. We believe that these trends will continue as we further expand Uber Eats from over 500 cities into nearly 700 cities where we already offer Personal Mobility.

The strength of our leading platform is demonstrated by our performance:

  • There were 91 million MAPCs for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.
  • There were 1.5 billion Trips on our platform for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.
  • There were 3.9 million Drivers on our platform for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.
  • Drivers have earned over $78.2 billion on our platform since 2015, as well as $1.2 billion in tips since we introduced in-app tipping for Drivers in July 2017, in each case through December 31, 2018.
  • We had a 9% Core Platform Contribution Margin in 2018. See the section titled “Summary Consolidated Financial and Operating Data—Notes about Certain Key Metrics—Core Platform Contribution Margin” for additional information.

In 2018, Gross Bookings grew to $49.8 billion, up 45% from $34.4 billion in 2017. Over the same period, revenue reached $11.3 billion, up 42% from $7.9 billion in the prior year. Core Platform Adjusted Net Revenue was $10.0 billion in 2018, up 39% from $7.2 billion in 2017. Net income (loss) was $1.0 billion in 2018 and $(4.0) billion in 2017. Adjusted EBITDA was $(1.8) billion in 2018 and $(2.6) billion in 2017. See the section titled “Summary Consolidated Financial and Operating Data—Non-GAAP Financial Measure” for additional information and a reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA.

Acquisition of Careem

In March 2019, we entered into an asset purchase agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets and assume substantially all of the liabilities of Careem. Dubai-based Careem, founded in 2012, provides ridesharing, meal delivery, and payments services to millions of users in 115 cities across the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan. This acquisition advances our strategy of having a leading ridesharing category position in every major region of the world in which we operate. We expect the acquisition of Careem to significantly expand our presence in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan, which we believe are attractive markets due to their size and growth potential, driven by tech-savvy populations, high smartphone penetration, low rates of car ownership, and communities developing the next generation of transportation options to serve their growing populations. Careem has ridesharing operations in 14 countries excluding Sudan, which business we expect Careem to divest prior to the closing of our acquisition. We estimate that these 14 countries had an aggregate population of over 530 million people and accounted for 331 billion vehicle miles during the year ended December 31, 2018.

The purchase price for the acquisition is approximately $3.1 billion, consisting of up to approximately $1.7 billion of our unsecured convertible notes and approximately $1.4 billion in cash, subject to certain adjustments. The acquisition of Careem’s business is subject to applicable regulatory approvals in certain of the countries in which Careem operates. The transaction is expected to close in January 2020. Following the closing of the acquisition, Careem co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Mudassir Sheikha will continue to lead the Careem business, which will report to its own board of directors, comprising three representatives from Uber and two representatives from Careem, which will allow Careem to preserve its brand and market-facing operations.

We have structured the acquisition and proposed integration of Careem with the goal of preserving the strengths of both companies, including opportunities to create operating efficiencies across both platforms. We expect to share consumer demand and Driver supply across both platforms, thereby increasing network density and reducing wait times for consumers and Drivers in the region, while simultaneously achieving synergies from combining back-end support functions and shared technology infrastructure.

How We Approach the Future

We are on a new path forward with the hiring of our Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi in September 2017 following many challenges regarding our culture, workplace practices, and reputation. In addition to hiring our Chief Executive Officer, we have revamped our senior executive team, hiring respected leaders with extensive public and private sector experience, including our Chief Financial Officer Nelson Chai, Chief Operating Officer Barney Harford, Chief Legal Officer Tony West, Chief People Officer Nikki Krishnamurthy, Chief Marketing Officer Rebecca Messina, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Bo Young Lee, Chief Trust and Security Officer Matt Olsen, and Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer Scott Schools. Our leadership team has sought to reform our culture fundamentally by improving our governance structure, strengthening our compliance program, creating and embracing new cultural norms, committing to diversity and inclusion, and rebuilding our relationships with employees, Drivers, consumers, cities, and regulators.

We have significantly improved our governance structure and are adopting policies that are similar to those adopted by leading Fortune 500 companies, and we believe these governance improvements will benefit our performance. We built a seasoned, qualified board of directors with the addition of new independent directors in 2017 and 2018, including Ursula Burns, Wan Ling Martello, Ronald Sugar, and John Thain. We divided the roles of Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer and appointed Dr. Sugar as independent Chairperson. We replaced our supervoting structure with a one-share, one-vote structure. We believe that these continuing governance changes will help us to scale our business responsibly, effectively manage risk, and act with integrity and accountability to all stakeholders. We believe that going public will further enhance our transparency with shareholders, regulators, and government officials.

We are committed to building a best-in-class compliance program. We have made tremendous progress in creating a program that is designed to prevent and detect violations of corporate policy, law, and regulations. We continue to enhance our compliance and ethics program by conducting top-down risk assessments and developing policies and practices customized for our growing and evolving global business.

We place diversity and inclusion at the core of everything we do. We strive to create a workplace that is inclusive of everyone, where every person can be authentic, and where that authenticity is celebrated as a strength. In pursuit of that goal, our senior leadership team sponsors and provides resources to our employee resource groups (“ERGs”), which are created and operated by our employees, and which are constantly working to further build and improve our culture.

We embrace the future with optimism, and we work towards our mission based on eight cultural norms. Our team came together to write these norms from the ground up to reflect who we are and where we are going.

  • We do the right thing. Period.
  • We build globally, we live locally. We harness the power and scale of our global operations to deeply connect with the cities, communities, drivers, and riders that we serve every day.
  • We are customer obsessed. We work tirelessly to earn our customers’ trust and business by solving their problems, maximizing their earnings, or lowering their costs. We surprise and delight them. We make short-term sacrifices for a lifetime of loyalty.
  • We celebrate differences. We stand apart from the average. We ensure people of diverse backgrounds feel welcome. We encourage different opinions and approaches to be heard, and then we come together and build.
  • We act like owners. We seek out problems, and we solve them. We help each other and those who matter to us. We have a bias for action and accountability. We finish what we start, and we build Uber to last. And when we make mistakes, we’ll own up to them.
  • We persevere. We believe in the power of grit. We don’t seek the easy path. We look for the toughest challenges, and we push. Our collective resilience is our secret weapon.
  • We value ideas over hierarchy. We believe that the best ideas can come from anywhere, both inside and outside our company. Our job is to seek out those ideas, to shape and improve them through candid debate, and to take them from concept to action.
  • We make big bold bets. Sometimes we fail, but failure makes us smarter. We get back up, we make the next bet, and we go!

We are committed to using a proactive and collaborative approach with regulators. As a result, we are rebuilding and strengthening our relationships with regulators around the world and engaging in an ongoing, constructive dialogue. For example, in Berlin and Munich, we have actively worked with regulators to introduce eco-friendly products, such as dockless e-bikes and our all-electric vehicle product, Uber Green, to help those cities decrease air pollution, reduce urban congestion, and increase access to clean transportation options. Additionally, in 2018, we partnered with officials in the province of Mendoza, Argentina to design the country’s first ridesharing regulations. We believe that this long-term collaborative approach will enable us to drive positive legislative change and allow people all over the globe to benefit from modern and efficient transportation options.

We strengthened our commitment to Drivers as part of our new path forward. In June 2017, we launched our Driver-focused “180 Days of Change” campaign, during which we created 38 new features and improvements for Drivers, crafted specifically to address their feedback. These improvements, which include tipping, two-minute cancellation times, 24/7 phone support, long-trip notifications, and live rider locations, were initially launched in the United States and we are continuing to roll these improvements out globally. We have created an “Early Tester Program” for Drivers to try features and updates before they are widely available, and we continue to prioritize and promote good Driver relations. In November 2018, we introduced a Driver rewards program, Uber Pro, in beta mode in eight cities in the United States. We expect Uber Pro to provide Drivers with the opportunity to increase their earnings, receive discounts on vehicle maintenance and gas, and receive full tuition reimbursement to complete courses toward an undergraduate degree or a non-degree certificate through Arizona State University Online.

It is a new day at Uber.