Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said his company has the best chance of being profitable out of all of the ride-hailing competitors out there, according to a report by CNBC.
“We are by far the global leader in ride-sharing,” Khosrowshahi said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We are structurally set up more efficiently and more optimally than anyone else to move to profitability. So actually this environment is perfect for us.”
Uber has been winding back its operations in certain markets where it’s struggled, and it recently decided to sell its Indian Eats delivery business to Zomato, while picking up a minority stake.
In 2016, Uber sold its China business to Didi Chung, and in 2018 it left Southeast Asia after making a deal with Grab, a Singapore rideshare company. The company has also made a deal with Yandex, a Russian Internet company, to help provide taxi services.
Both Uber and Lyft shed a lot of value after going public, prompting questions from investors as to whether they could ever be profitable.
Uber is down about 10 percent since it went public, and Lyft has lost about 40 percent of its value. However, things are starting to change recently. Uber is up 26 percent and Lyft is up 12 percent since the start of the year.
There is plenty of talk about the need for consolidation in the market, and Khosrowshahi said Uber’s step of taking a minority stake in Zomato made sense, “as opposed to making two bets alone and competing with each other.” Uber owns about 10 percent of Zomato.
“The vision for growth is absolutely there, but it’s growth that makes sense, and we’ve been sellers in some spots and we’ve been buyers as well,” Khosrowshahi said. “The point is consolidation has got to happen. At some point that growth has to consolidate.”
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