Uber, which had already been spending heavily to lure back drivers who left early within the pandemic, responded in March by charging riders a small fuel fee for every trip, which went to drivers. It said on Wednesday that it had more drivers on its platform than at any time for the reason that pandemic began.
That confidence — and its rosy outlook for the subsequent quarter — differed starkly from its rival Lyft, which reported financial results on Tuesday. Lyft’s stock plunged 25 percent in after-hours trading after its executives said on an earnings call that they were still struggling to steer drivers to return to the platform and can be spending more cash to encourage them to accomplish that.
Uber’s shares fell together with Lyft’s, and Uber said shortly after that it might release its financial results hours sooner than initially planned on Wednesday, seemingly in an try to differentiate its results from Lyft’s and pre-empt a drop in its stock when the market opened later that morning. But Uber’s stock still fell greater than 4 percent during normal trading hours.
On a call with investors on Wednesday, Mr. Khosrowshahi acknowledged that Uber also needed to proceed to extend the variety of drivers on its platform. But he painted an optimistic picture of the corporate’s business by pointing to areas of potential growth, like Uber’s partnerships with taxi corporations and its investments within the freight industry.
“There’s a variety of work to do ahead of us, but it is a machine that’s rolling,” he said of the availability of drivers, adding that Uber was “starting to point out separation against our competitors.”
Though Lyft said the variety of lively drivers in the primary three months of the yr had grown 40 percent from a yr earlier, Logan Green, the corporate’s chief executive, also said drivers had “signed off” during Omicron and had yet to return within the numbers needed to fulfill rebounding demand.
Lyft reported better-than-expected revenue, $876 million, a 44 percent increase from the primary quarter of 2021, and $197 million in net loss, a 54 percent decrease. The corporate had 17.8 million lively riders, up from 13.5 million initially of last yr but down from the nearly 19 million it reported toward the tip of 2021.
