Uber (UBER) Q1 FY26 earnings call: guidance and Q&A

How are insurance cost savings impacting LA/SF and confidence in U.S. mobility acceleration? How will Uber shift users from on-demand to pre-booking for hotels?

Insurance savings are translating to better pricing and accelerated trip growth in LA/SF, boosting confidence in U.S. mobility acceleration. Uber's success with Uber Reserve demonstrated the ability to transition users to planned services, and with 1.5 billion trips outside home cities, hotels are a natural expansion, leveraging Uber One benefits and Expedia's inventory to drive cross-platform engagement.

“The experience with Reserve for us demonstrated our ability to go from on-demand to planned services, so to speak. Travel is a very, very natural category for us to get into.”

asked by Doug Anmuth · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi

What critical tech investments are being made to tie services together, personalize, and drive agent-driven behavior?

Uber prioritizes core reliability and selection, then adds services. AI and agents provide unique benefits by allowing personalized user interaction, driving cross-platform usage, and enabling new services. AI helps anticipate user needs (e.g., pre-selecting destinations) and offer personalized upsells, with cross-platform consumers growing 1.5x faster than overall consumers.

“AI solves all that because essentially, the way that any user wants to interact with your services is up to that user. They can talk and they can ask whatever they want.”

asked by Eric Sheridan · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi

What is Uber's progress in U.S. suburban delivery, and what are the drivers of Uber One's strong growth?

Suburban delivery is in early stages but showing strong growth, with trip rates 2x faster in sparse markets globally. This is driven by expanding selection and reliability. Uber One's growth to 50 million members is due to superior membership benefits (no delivery fees, mobility credits), new offerings like hotel credits, global travel benefits, and member days, with no signs of slowing down.

“We ended 2024 with 30 million members. So we've added 20 million members in just a single year, which is pretty extraordinary.”

asked by Brian Nowak · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi

What is the impact of Waymo's launches on Uber's growth, and what is driving success in signing AV partners?

Uber's Mobility business continues to accelerate, with no discernible impact from Waymo launches; Uber's category position in SF/LA is higher than 6 months ago. Success with AV partners is driven by Uber's demand, higher utilization of AVs on its platform, and the launch of Uber Autonomous Solutions, which helps partners with fleet management and data collection.

“At this point, we don't see any effect of the Waymo launches on our overall business, and we continue to see Waymo kind of the performance of our businesses with Waymo in Austin, Atlanta continue to be strong, driver earnings are up.”

asked by Justin Post · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi

What does successful payback look like for Uber's investments, and how does the Santander deal integrate into scaling AV fleets?

Uber evaluates investments based on incremental audience acquisition, frequency lifts, or margin improvement, balancing a portfolio of products with varying payback periods. The Santander deal is part of building an entire AV ecosystem, including fleet management (Hertz), financing, and insurance (Marsh/Apollo), to scale AVs. Uber's platform provides predictable revenue per vehicle, creating a healthy financing environment despite the lack of established residual value for AVs.

“In order for AV to scale and get into the hundreds of millions in terms of trip count, we really have to build out a whole ecosystem around the development of these AV drivers.”

asked by Nikhil Devnani · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi

Is AI spending supplementing or replacing existing processes? What are the market share trends in top 10 delivery/mobility markets, and how is delivery achieving leverage with lower-margin offerings?

AI is primarily supplementing and accelerating existing processes, making employees more efficient across all functions, with 10% of code now committed by autonomous agents. Uber's delivery position is improving globally, with offensive expansion in Europe and strong trends in APAC. Leverage in delivery is achieved by balancing low-cost, high-frequency products with high-fare, high-profit premium products, driving overall lifetime value.

“About 10% of our codes now is committed that's committed and built by agents, autonomous agents out there.”

asked by John Colantuoni · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi

How is Uber addressing the risk of personal agents (Meta, Google) abstracting direct user relationships with marketplaces?

Uber is building an indispensable local service with unparalleled global breadth and deep user engagement, especially through Uber One. The company is also investing in its own AI agents and tools, which offer magical, personalized experiences. While Uber will work with third-party agents via APIs, it expects the majority of transactions to remain direct, drawing parallels to the travel industry's experience with metasearch where value accrued to consolidated players.

“We're very confident that AI is going to empower entirely new experiences, but we think the majority of those experiences are going to come direct to us.”

asked by Michael Morton · answered by Dara Khosrowshahi