What Are Uber Stock Bears Missing?

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The rides and food orders booked on the Uber (UBER) app are still growing fast, and that may be what Uber bears are missing. You probably think of Uber as a ride-hailing app past its best growth. The shares fit that picture, falling 30.1% over the past year while the S&P 500 returned 15.0%. That is the contradiction. So how fast are Uber’s bookings growing, and where is the growth coming from?

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Uber’s Bookings Have Grown Above 20% For Four Quarters

Gross bookings, the value of everything booked on the Uber app, grew 22% from a year earlier in constant currency to more than $58 billion in fiscal Q2 2026, management said on the August 5, 2026 call. The total was above the top of management’s own forecast, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of growth above 20%. Uber now handles about 300 million trips a week, management said.

Management traced that growth to four areas: low-cost products, customers who use more than one Uber service, newer products, and sparse markets, where it said rides and deliveries are growing significantly faster than in dense markets. In the U.S., the low-cost Wait & Save option lets riders trade time for a lower price. Management said the offering is growing very quickly, and the company then tries to move those riders up to its main service.

Only 20% of Uber’s consumers use both Rides and Eats, management said. That group is growing 1.5 times faster than customers who use just one service.

Will Robotaxi Makers Still Need Uber?

Uber’s management argues they will, because Uber brings the riders. Robotaxis launched with Uber as a partner often complete mid-20s to low-30s trips per vehicle per day. Management called that volume quite substantial for what those vehicles need to earn.

Robotaxis look like the obvious threat to a ride-hailing app. On the August 5 call, an analyst asked about press reports on Uber’s Waymo partnerships in Austin and Atlanta, and management said it expects to keep operating there next year while adding other partners. Management called Waymo a very important partner. Uber said on the call that it was live with autonomous vehicles in 7 cities and expected to be in 15 by the end of 2026. Since then, Uber has cut about 10% of its workforce, and its robotaxi leader, Sarfraz Maredia, is due to leave on November 16.

Yet robotaxis are still small on Uber, making up less than 0.5% of its trip volume, management said. So owning Uber today means owning its rides and deliveries business, and the shares cost less than the market for it. At the October 27 close, they traded at 12.9 times operating cash flow, against 15.2 for the S&P 500. Uber is also buying more of that business: Delivery Hero’s boards backed its takeover offer, valued at about $15 billion, in September, and on October 6 it agreed to buy ezCater for $2.3 billion in cash.

What Could Go Wrong For Uber?

Competition could, and management said it is already affecting trip volumes in Uber’s 2-wheeler business, a newer segment where margins are quite low. In Brazil, management said there is an enormous amount of competition in food delivery, with rivals going after the 2-wheeler delivery supply.

Uber’s reported revenue has also grown more slowly each quarter, decelerating from 20.4% growth in fiscal Q3 2025 to 12.2% in fiscal Q2 2026. That pace is well below the 22% bookings growth, which was measured in constant currency. Management said most of the drop in its mobility revenue share came from a business model change in the U.K., and that its net take rate stayed broadly stable. The shares also fell further than the S&P 500 ETF in each of five market shocks from 2022 to 2025. The widest gap came in the 2022 inflation shock, when Uber fell 53% and the fund fell 24%.

For now, the case for Uber comes from its bookings, which kept growing while its share price fell. Gross bookings growth is the number to watch when Uber is expected to report in November 2026.

Does This Mean You Should Act On UBER?

Our purpose is to inform you with unique data so you make the right investment decisions. That said, betting on a single stock is always risky, no matter which direction you choose.

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