In its first earnings as a public company, Uber posted losses of $1 billion over the previous quarter, more or less matching investor expectations, because sending the GDP of Vanuatu off a cliff every three months is Uber’s current business model, more or less.
Uber has, in fact, pretty consistently lost around this amount of money—sometimes a little more, sometimes less, and once, briefly, it was profitable.
In its own assessment of its future, Uber—which loses money on every ride it gives—sees its long-term profitability coming from autonomous vehicles and its near-term solution as even more drastically nickel-and-diming its own drivers. The company’s stock has traded below IPO value since hitting the market nearly three weeks ago, and it’s currently worth approximately $5 billion less than the $72 billion valuation it had before going public.
In spite of all that, Uber’s stock jump nearly 4 percent in after-hours trading.
Cool.