It appears Uber is readying itself for an IPO as its release of what Bloomberg calls “cherry-picked financials” suggests a fast-growing company whose losses are shrinking.
Uber “was a company that was in trouble and lost its way in certain ways” according to Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, but now he is fixing things apparently.
Uber said that in the first quarter it generated about $2.6 billion in revenue.
As Bloomberg reports, the company recorded a profit on paper, after accounting for the value of selling its Southeast Asian business to Grab and its Russian business to Yandex.
But it’s a different story without those windfalls.
Uber had a loss of $312 million before interest, taxes and other expenses in the quarter, cutting those losses in half compared to the first three months of 2017, according to financials provided by Uber. That’s a marked improvement for a company that’s burned through more than $10 billion.
As Bloomberg also reports, Uber also announced on Wednesday that investment firms Coatue Management, Altimeter and TPG plan to purchase between $400 million and $600 million in Uber stock from existing shareholders.
The deal values Uber at $62 billion. The transaction is meant to allow current Uber employees to sell some shares if they want to. Uber is aiming for a public offering next year. If it fails to do so, some of its investors could be free to sell their shares on the private market.
“We are off to a terrific start in 2018,” Khosrowshahi said in a statement, noting that the growth of Uber’s rides business was exceeding internal expectations.
“Given the size of the opportunity ahead of us and our goal of making Uber a true mobility platform, we plan to reinvest any over-performance even more aggressively this year, both in our core business as well as in big bets like Uber Eats globally.”
And while that was all very exciting, we note that Khosrowshahi ‘fessed up today in Paris at Viva Technology conference,
“Of course Uber will be profitable one day. I just can’t tell you when,”
And then added, as we detailed previously “ultimately transportation has to be shared, electric and in 3 dimensions.”
“What’s different going forward is we’re no longer just about cars, we’re about urban mobility.
It includes cars, pool, electric bikes and flying cars, we hope.”
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