But, we reiterate, whether high revenues translates to profits passed down to Uber’s shareholders is a question mark.
Another key feature of the company has been its active acquisition/partnership spree. In 2016, the company sold its China operations to DiDi in exchange for an 18% stake in DiDi and a commitment from the latter to invest $1 billion in Uber. In 2018, Uber combined its operations in Russia and some CIS countries with those of Yandex.Taxi and invested $225 million in the joint venture. It did the same with Southeast Asia-based Uber clone Grab in exchange for a 27.5% ownership stake. In 2020, it acquired Careem – an Uber clone in the Middle East and North Africa – and sold its Eats operation in India to Zomato in exchange for a 9.99% stake.
Interestingly, in these current times, the company acquired U.S. delivery service Postmates for $2.65 billion in December of last year. In January of this year, Uber ATG was sold to self-driving startup Aurora Innovation for $4 billion while Uber invested $400 million into Aurora to take a 26% stake. In February, the company announced the purchase of U.S. alcohol delivery service Drizly for $1.1 billion in cash and stock.
All of these investments will be additional sources of market value impact for the company’s stock.
Airbnb and Uber: Where They Stand Today
In many respects, the two companies are quite similar despite being in different areas of the economy: their primary market is North America, they’re both champions of the “gig economy”, they’ve both had a grim 2020, and they both started off 2021 with a bang by outperforming the S&P 500 in Q1 2021.
