When a stock is as down as Uber’s has been, a little dose of good news can work wonders as an antidepressant. Uber shares jumped nearly 12% today after the company disclosed it was closer to profitability than previously thought. The rally put DoorDash, a smaller company that rose above Uber’s market valuation last week, back in its place. You can almost hear the sighs of relief drifting out of Uber’s San Francisco headquarters (well, you could if they were all working in the office).
But let’s not overdo things. Uber’s news today wasn’t that impressive. The company projected that third quarter gross bookings would be between $22.8 billion and $23.2 billion for the third quarter. That’s a narrower range than the $22 billion to $24 billion projected early last month when the company reported second quarter earnings. The midpoint of the new range is the same though. It doesn’t really clarify how the Delta variant’s impact on the reopening of society has affected the recovery in Uber’s ride-hailing business. Uncertainty about that issue has depressed Uber’s stock since June, as we noted last week. And the only real clue we got on this was CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s comments at a Goldman Sachs investment conference this afternoon that the ride-hailing recovery had “paused a little bit” in August due to Covid before resuming in September.
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