Uber, which had already spent a lot of money luring drivers who left early in the pandemic, responded in March by charging riders a small fuel fee for every ride that went to drivers. It said on Wednesday it had more drivers on its platform than at any time since the start of the pandemic.
That confidence — and its rosy outlook for the next quarter — differed widely from its rival Lyft, which reported financial results on Tuesday. Shares of Lyft plunged 25 percent in after-hours trading after executives said during an earnings call they were still struggling to convince drivers to return to the platform and would spend more money encouraging them to do so.
Uber’s shares fell along with Lyft’s, and Uber said shortly afterwards it would release its financial results hours earlier than initially planned on Wednesday, ostensibly in an effort to differentiate its results from Lyft’s and predict a drop in its stock. occur when the market opened later that morning. However, Uber’s share fell about 8 percent in premarket trading.
Speaking to investors on Wednesday, Khosrowshahi acknowledged that Uber should also continue to increase the number of drivers on its platform. But he painted an optimistic picture of the company’s operations by pointing to areas of potential growth, such as Uber’s partnerships with taxi companies and its investments in the freight industry.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, but this is a machine that’s rolling,” he said of driver delivery, adding that Uber “started showing separation from our competitors.”
While Lyft said the number of active drivers had grown 40 percent in the first three months of the year from a year earlier, Logan Green, the company’s CEO, also said drivers had “unsubscribed” from Omicron and more. had to return in the numbers needed to meet the increasing demand.
Lyft reported better-than-expected revenue at $876 million, up 44 percent from the first quarter of 2021, and $197 million in net loss, down 54 percent. The company had 17.8 million active riders, up from 13.5 million at the start of last year but down from the nearly 19 million reported at the end of 2021.
