Uber's gross bookings rise 20% to $59.8 billion, even as net income tumbles

Uber Technologies reported a 20 percent jump in gross bookings for the third quarter of 2026, extending a run of accelerating growth even as a swing in the value of its minority stakes in other transportation companies erased most of its headline profit. The company filed its results with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, alongside a separate disclosure that one of its longest-serving executives is leaving.

Gross bookings, the total value of rides, deliveries and freight shipments booked on Uber's platform, reached $59.8 billion, up 20 percent from a year earlier on both a reported and constant-currency basis, according to the filing. Revenue rose 10 percent to $14.8 billion. Trips completed on the platform climbed 16 percent to 4.1 billion, the company said in its quarterly report filed with the SEC. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said the quarter marked Uber's fifth consecutive period of gross-bookings growth above 20 percent.

On an adjusted basis, the company's profitability improved. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.88, up 35 percent from $0.65 a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA rose 31 percent to $3.0 billion. Non-GAAP operating income climbed 38 percent to $2.3 billion, which the company's finance chief, Balaji Krishnamurthy, described as a record margin relative to gross bookings.

Delivery and freight outgrow the core ride-hailing business

The gains were not evenly spread across Uber's three main lines of business. Mobility, the ride-hailing segment that remains Uber's largest by bookings, grew gross bookings 18 percent to $29.5 billion, but segment revenue fell 2 percent to $7.5 billion. The company attributed the gap to a change in how it accounts for its UK mobility business, which reduced reported revenue and cut several percentage points off overall revenue growth for the quarter, according to the filing.

Delivery, which includes food and grocery orders, grew faster: gross bookings rose 22 percent to $28.5 billion and revenue rose 23 percent to $5.5 billion, with segment operating income up 30 percent to $1.1 billion. Freight, Uber's smallest and least profitable unit, posted the fastest bookings growth of the three segments at 35 percent, reaching $1.8 billion, while narrowing its operating loss to $33 million from $40 million a year earlier.

Reported profit falls as equity stakes swing in value

Despite the operational improvement, Uber's net income attributable to shareholders fell 92 percent to $512 million, and GAAP diluted earnings per share dropped to $0.25 from $3.11 a year earlier. The comparison is skewed by one-off items in both periods. Uber's results a year ago were lifted by a $4.9 billion release of a tax valuation allowance that had no cash effect. This quarter's results, by contrast, were weighed down by a roughly $476 million pretax loss from revaluing Uber's minority equity stakes in other transportation and autonomous-vehicle companies, the company disclosed in its earnings release.

Uber also pulled back on share buybacks during the quarter, repurchasing $750 million of its own stock, down from $1.46 billion a year earlier, cash-flow figures in the filing show.

Those equity stakes — in Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab, self-driving developer Aurora Innovation and China's Didi — date back to deals in which Uber exited operating markets in exchange for equity rather than cash. Uber sold its China ride-hailing business to Didi in 2016 and folded its Southeast Asia operations into Grab in 2018, taking minority ownership positions in both rivals. It separately holds a stake in Aurora, a self-driving truck and robotaxi technology developer, through a 2020 deal in which Uber sold its own autonomous-vehicle unit, Advanced Technologies Group, to Aurora. Because Uber carries these holdings at fair value, swings in the three companies' share prices flow directly through its quarterly net income, producing volatility that has little to do with the performance of Uber's own ride-hailing, delivery and freight operations.

A top lieutenant departs as autonomous driving expands

In a separate filing the same day, Uber disclosed that Jill Hazelbaker, its president and chief corporate affairs officer, will step down effective November 30 for an outside opportunity. Hazelbaker has led Uber's communications, marketing and public-policy functions since 2017 and was one of the company's most senior executives, according to her biography on Uber's leadership page. The filing named no successor.

"It was trademark Jill: operating with exceptional clarity, integrity, and energy," Khosrowshahi wrote of Hazelbaker's tenure in the regulatory filing.

Hazelbaker, in turn, thanked Khosrowshahi for his "trust, partnership, and friendship," according to the filing. She joined Uber's leadership team in 2017 to run communications and public policy after the departure of Rachel Whetstone, and took on an expanded role overseeing marketing as well in a 2019 reorganization under Khosrowshahi. Her exit removes one of the few executives who has worked alongside Khosrowshahi through Uber's initial public offering, its pandemic-era downturn and its more recent push into profitability.

The earnings release also detailed progress on Uber's push into autonomous vehicles, an area where the company has said it plans to spend heavily in partnership with outside developers rather than building self-driving technology itself. Khosrowshahi said Uber expects roughly 700 fully driverless vehicles operating on its platform by the end of the year, with more than 2,000 planned for 2027, as the company shifts its emphasis from testing partnerships to what he called commercial execution.

What's next

For the fourth quarter, Uber guided to gross bookings of $63.25 billion to $65.25 billion, implying year-over-year growth of 18 to 22 percent on a constant-currency basis, along with non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.95 to $0.99 and adjusted EBITDA of $3.13 billion to $3.23 billion. The guidance, detailed in the earnings release posted to Uber's investor relations site, suggests the company expects its growth streak to continue into the holiday season, even as it keeps spending on grocery delivery and autonomous-vehicle partnerships that have drawn scrutiny from some investors over their effect on near-term margins.

Uber's results land in the middle of a crowded earnings week for the broader delivery and ride-hailing industry, with rivals and partners across food delivery, grocery and freight all reporting third-quarter numbers within days of one another. Investors have been parsing those reports for signs of how durable post-pandemic demand for on-demand transportation and delivery remains as households weigh holiday-season spending against a choppier labor market. Uber's own earnings call was expected to give analysts their first chance to question executives directly about the Hazelbaker transition, the pace of autonomous-vehicle deployment and the company's capital-allocation priorities heading into 2027.