Uber’s stock is 29% below its peak of eleven months ago, while the company is doing better than ever: bookings are growing 24% a year and free cash flow has passed ten billion dollars for the first time.
The price shows when the market got scared
The peak was $100.10 on 6 October 2025. The low was $65.94 on 24 July 2026. The last full close before this analysis was $70.84 (21 September 2026), which is 29.2% below the peak and 14.5% lower than at the start of the year.
The date of the low is not a coincidence. On 24 July 2026, Uber and Alphabet’s Waymo announced that they were ending their exclusive arrangement in Atlanta and Austin: Waymo will launch its own app in both cities in January 2028, while its robotaxis remain available through Uber until the contract expires in May 2028.
The second sharp drop came on 5 August 2026, the day of the second-quarter results: −5.3% to $68.18. What followed is interesting: two days later the stock gained 6.5% and closed at $75.02. It looks as if the market is not of one mind and a lot is already priced in at this level.
How Uber really makes money
The company reports two different numbers:
- Gross bookings are the full amount paid by riders and by people ordering food, including tips and fees. This is money that flows through the app, not the company’s money: drivers and couriers have to be paid out of it.
- Revenue is the part left to Uber after paying drivers and couriers. This is the number from which the company covers its costs and makes a profit.
In the second quarter of 2026, bookings were $58.0 billion (+24%) and revenue was $14.191 billion (+12%). The gap in growth is not a sign of a weak business. Uber states explicitly in its release that business model changes reduced revenue growth by 8 percentage points. Where Uber moves from the role of merchant to that of agent, the same ride brings the same earnings but less booked revenue.
That is why this detail is key to understanding the company:
| Segment | Bookings Q2 2026 | Growth | Revenue | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobility (rides) | $28.988bn | +22% | $7.363bn | +1% |
| Delivery | $27.463bn | +26% | $5.245bn | +28% |
| Freight | $1.571bn | +25% | $1.583bn | +26% |
The two circles show why both numbers are needed. By bookings, rides and delivery are almost equally large businesses, and freight is a sliver. By revenue the picture is different: freight contributes a tenth, because Uber books almost the entire amount paid there, while for rides and delivery it books only its own share.
With revenue growth of +1%, Mobility looks like a business that has stalled, yet its bookings are growing 22%.
The ratio between the two numbers is called the take rate: how much of every dollar paid by the rider the platform keeps. In Mobility it was 25.4% in the second quarter of 2026 (7.363 of 28.988 billion), in Delivery 19.1%. This percentage is the most sensitive point of the whole investment thesis.
Volume is also growing in units that accounting cannot reshape: 3.867 billion trips (+18%) and 208 million monthly active users (+16%).
Operating income is the profit from the business itself, before taxes and investments. In Q2 2026 it reached $1.89 billion, 30% more than a year earlier. Profit is growing much faster than revenue, which means the margin is widening: adjusted EBITDA was $2.819 billion (+33%), and its share of bookings rose from 4.5% to 4.9%.
Why Uber’s net income is misleading
Uber’s net income swings between $0.26 billion and $6.88 billion a quarter, while operating income stays stable and grows. There are three reasons, all stated in the filings:
- Tax benefits instead of a tax expense. In the last quarter of 2024 the tax line was −$6.00 billion, in the third quarter of 2025 −$4.05 billion. This is the accounting recognition of future tax relief.
- Revaluations of investments. Uber holds stakes in other companies. In Q2 2026 net income included $1.6 billion of net gains from revaluations. In the first quarter of 2026 the same line took away $1.49 billion.
- This is why GAAP earnings per share of $1.17 and adjusted earnings of $0.81 differ by a third in the same quarter. Adjusted earnings grew 35%.
The price/earnings ratio based on reported earnings of the last twelve months is 15.5 and gives the impression of a cheap stock. That impression is artificial, because the denominator contains a tax benefit that will not be repeated. It is fairer to look at operating income or cash flow.
The cash that is actually left
Free cash flow is currently Uber’s cleanest number. Over the last twelve months it was $10.12 billion, which according to the company is the first time it has been above ten billion.
For scale: at a market value of $145.2 billion, this means a price/free cash flow ratio of 14.4. Part of this cash is returned to owners through share buybacks: the diluted share count fell from 2,154 million (Q3 2024) to 2,050 million (Q2 2026).
The bear case: robotaxis
Waymo is proving that it does not need Uber. Since launching its service in Atlanta it has not announced a single new city together with Uber, but it has expanded into six additional markets through its own app. In January 2028 it will launch its own app in Austin and Atlanta as well. The Financial Times reported on internal discussions at Waymo about parting ways with Uber, partly because of the two companies’ conflicting proposals on regulation in individual US states.
The core of the bear case: if self-driving vehicles remove the driver, Uber’s biggest advantage disappears, namely the network of drivers it spent fifteen years building. A fleet owner can reach the rider directly and keep the whole margin. In that case Uber is no longer an indispensable intermediary but one of several channels negotiating a commission.
Uber is responding by widening its set of partners (among them Wayve, Zoox, Nuro, Baidu, Pony.ai, Rivian and Lucid), which spreads the risk but also says that exclusivity with the strongest player is gone.
The bull case: this network counts for something
Uber has 208 million users who already have the app on their phone and 3.9 billion trips a quarter. The owner of a self-driving fleet still has to win demand, city by city, while Uber can deliver it immediately. In off-peak hours, when a fleet would otherwise stand idle, that matters economically.
The gap in scale is enormous. On 5 September 2026 Waymo was completing more than 500,000 paid trips a week with a fleet of about 4,000 vehicles in 14 US cities. Uber completed 3.867 billion trips in the second quarter of 2026, which is 297.5 million a week. The ratio is about 595 to 1. If Waymo wanted to carry as many people as Uber at the same output per vehicle, it would need about 2.4 million vehicles. Even its own target, a million trips a week, is 0.3% of Uber’s volume today.
Demand is not even. There must be as many drivers as the peak requires, or the customer is left without a ride. A robotaxi is bought and paid for whether it drives or stands still; a driver with their own car logs on when it pays and logs off when it does not. Uber therefore absorbs swings in demand without owning assets, while a fleet owner carries the cost all the time. The same goes for demand data: Uber gathers it from 3.867 billion trips a quarter, Waymo from about 6.5 million.
Meanwhile the business is not in crisis: bookings up 24%, the margin rising, free cash flow above 10 billion. Guidance for the third quarter of 2026 calls for bookings of $58.25 to $60.25 billion (+18 to 22%) and adjusted earnings per share of $0.84 to $0.88, 28 to 35% more than a year earlier.
It is also interesting what market positioning shows:
| Measure | Value | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Short interest | 45.12m shares = 2.21% of all | Low. Almost nobody is betting against the company |
| Institutional ownership | 84.09% | The stock is held by professional money |
| Analysts | 50, consensus “buy” | Average target $101.24 (+42.9%) |
| Target range | from $70 to $150 | Disagreement by a factor of two |
More than bearish, the market is divided. A target range from 70 to 150 dollars for the same company means that even professional analysts cannot estimate how much robotaxis will take from Uber. The price has landed somewhere in the middle of that uncertainty.
What the price already includes
Instead of judging whether the stock is “cheap”, a more useful question is: what does Uber have to achieve for a purchase at $70.84 to deliver a decent return?
The starting point is the consensus estimate of 49 analysts for earnings per share in 2026: $3.36. At today’s price that is a price/earnings ratio of 21.1. The table above shows the annual return over the next five years for different combinations of earnings growth and the ratio at which the market would value the stock in five years:
- 10% growth and an exit P/E of 15 → 2.8% a year. Less than a bond.
- 15% growth and an exit P/E of 20 → 13.8% a year.
- 20% growth and an exit P/E of 25 → 24.2% a year.
The point is not any single cell but the shape of the table: the range of outcomes is huge, and it is decided mainly by one question: will Uber in five years still be a company the market credits with growth? Anyone expecting 10% growth and a modest valuation will not make money on this stock. Anyone who believes in continued 20% growth is buying at a price that does not yet include it.
For comparison: the average analyst target is $101.24, which means +42.9% in one year. Their lowest target, $70, is 1.2% below today’s price.
What to watch to know who is right
Instead of guessing, here are four measurable things that will settle it over the coming years:
- Mobility bookings growth. As long as it stays at or near +20%, robotaxis are not yet taking demand away.
- Margin. The share of adjusted EBITDA in bookings (now 4.9%) shows whether Uber has to pay for growth with a lower commission.
- Austin and Atlanta after January 2028. Once Waymo launches its own app there, it will be possible for the first time to measure how many riders Uber actually loses to a direct channel.
- New self-driving partners. Every signed partner reduces dependence on Waymo; every cancelled deal increases it.
The next milestone is the third-quarter 2026 results, where the yardstick is already set in advance: bookings of $58.25 to $60.25 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $0.84 to $0.88. Uber will publish them on 29 October 2026, and according to the Investing.com calendar analysts expect earnings per share of $0.865 and revenue of $14.68 billion, an amount within the company’s own guidance.
A conclusion everyone has to reach for themselves
Uber today is not a story of a company in trouble. The business is growing, the margin is widening, cash flow is at a record and almost nobody is betting against the stock. The 29 percent fall in the price is not a reaction to a deteriorating business but to a changed picture of the future: the market has marked Uber down because it does not know whether in ten years it will own the demand or be just one of the channels to a driverless vehicle.
The question of whether it is worth buying today cannot be answered with a table. The answer hangs on a single judgement that numbers cannot replace: will a network of 208 million users still be worth something in a world without drivers?
Anyone who answers yes is paying 14.4 times free cash flow today for a company whose bookings are growing 24% and operating income 30% a year, while its strongest rival does one square out of 595. Anyone who answers no is looking at a stock worth 145 billion whose main advantage may lose its value within a few years; in that case even 14.4 times is expensive.
Sources: Q2 2026 earnings release, filed with the SEC on 5 August 2026 · SEC XBRL companyfacts, CIK 0001543151 (retrieved 23 September 2026) · CNBC: Uber and Waymo to end exclusivity in Atlanta and Austin, 24 July 2026 · The Next Web: Waymo with its own app in January 2028 · Automotive News: Waymo exits the exclusive partnership · stockanalysis.com: analyst forecasts and stock statistics (both 23 September 2026) · prices: Yahoo Finance, daily closes · robotaxi tracker, as of September 2026 for Waymo’s trip volume and fleet · release date and expectations for the third quarter: Investing.com calendar, 23 September 2026.
Notes on the data: The Q4 quarter in the charts is calculated as the annual figure minus the first three quarters, because the SEC does not tag it separately in the annual report. Ratios are based on the close of 21 September 2026 ($70.84); the source has no close for 22 September 2026, so the price chart has a gap, and on 23 September trading was still under way when this was prepared. The return scenarios illustrate the arithmetic and are not a forecast.
This analysis was first published in Slovenian on 23 September 2026; all figures are as of that date. Educational content, not financial advice. The author is not calling for the purchase or sale of any security. The data is summarised from the sources listed above and may change.