Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) Q4 2021 Results
Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO
“…We had a strong quarter to close out 2021 on a high note. Our results continued to demonstrate both how eager people are to move around their cities as restrictions ease up, and how Delivery has become an important day — important part of their daily lives.
Gross bookings of $25.9 billion came in at the high end of our guidance range, with MAPCs of 118 million, reaching an all-time high. Continued strong execution by our team delivered $86 million of adjusted EBITDA, nicely above our guidance range.
In Q4, we continued to see strong recovery in our Mobility business. December gross bookings nearly recovered to 2019 levels and approached a $50 billion annual run rate in the first few weeks of the month.
Meanwhile, Delivery volumes stayed strong as we continue to improve the profitability profile of that business. Delivery reported its first adjusted EBITDA profit, including for the first time in the U.S., even as Uber Eats became the fastest-growing delivery player in America.
Uber Freight closed the transformative acquisition with Transplace during the quarter, it’s never been clear that our supply chains are in dire need of technical innovation. And along with Transplace, Uber Freight, now at $1 billion quarterly run rate, is well positioned to bring digital native change to the enormous logistics ecosystem.
Looking back at 2021, we had a great year. I can’t say when exactly as I predicted, but our teams have shown an incredible ability to remain agile and manage through change effectively. Despite COVID and all of its unpredictability, we now have reported our second adjusted EBITDA profitable quarter, and we expect to generate significant and improvement profitability in 2022.
Of course, COVID remains a part of our lives. We started to see some impact of the Omicron wave late in December. The silver lining is that the impacts are becoming more muted as we learn to live with the virus. Lockdowns are less strict and vaccines are available across the world.
Omicron also arrived at a time of year when we usually see seasonal declines. Toll on Mobility gross bookings decreased 21% from December to January, that’s only about 10 points worse than what we typically see at this time of year.
On a trips basis, the decline was even more muted, down just 15% month-on-month, with pricing coming down meaningfully as marketplace balance improved. It appears that the Omicron impact on our Mobility business has come and gone relatively quickly, even faster than the global case counts.
We’re beginning to see several major economies in Europe relaxing COVID restrictions, including the U.K., the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, with more countries expected to take similar actions soon. In the last two weeks, the Mobility recovery has rapidly resumed with both trips and gross bookings recovering and Mobility gross bookings last week up 25% month-on-month.
I’ll quickly touch on driver supply, which continues to improve. We made steady progress through product innovation, more targeted marketing and on-the-ground operational refinements to onboard more drivers and couriers faster. Nearly 325,000 people started to work on Uber in the quarter, bringing our total global active earner base to 4.4 million people, the largest it’s been since the second quarter of 2020.
One important call-out is that while the Omicron wave acted as a temporary deterrent to demand, supply has been much more stable. As a result, surge and wait times have improved to their lowest level in the year. Recent internal research has shown that Uber is by far the preferred choice amongst drivers, and we’re confident that our marketplace will be more, not less balanced going forward.
Turning now to Delivery, which exceeded our expectations and performed better than we typically in January, likely in part to Omicron. This relative overperformance has moderated just as the Mobility trends have improved. Overall trends continue to be very healthy, and there’s no question now that Delivery’s here stay, both in food and other verticals.
Delivery reached an important milestone in Q4, generating $25 million in segment adjusted EBITDA and marking the first profitable quarter of many to come. And as I said on our last call with you, we view the turn to EBITDA profitability as a big moment, but ultimately just a step along the way. It’s creating a self-sustaining and incredibly valuable business….”