Uber Sees Q4 Bookings Boost as Members Move Beyond Ride-Hailing

“The pandemic’s impact on our mobility business is now well and truly behind us.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi struck a positive tone on the most recent earnings call Wednesday (Feb. 8), as riders flocked to the company’s core offerings of getting users from point A to point B and getting things, particularly food, delivered to the doorstep.

There’s also been a boost from Uber One, the company’s cross-platform membership program. The member base, according to Wednesday’s stats and commentary, saw the installed base nearly double to approximately 12 million members.

Those members now generate more than a quarter of Uber’s total Gross Bookings and 40% of Delivery bookings, per commentary and noted, additionally, in the CEO’s prepared remarks. The company has said that an Uber One membership pays for itself after just two Eats orders. The average Uber One member saves $27 per month across Mobility and Delivery. For the platform model itself, the benefits are readily apparent. Khosrowshahi said on the call that Uber One members had shown a 15% increase in retention, with four times the monthly spend of non-members.

“We are pushing Uber One,” noted Khosrowshahi during the Q and A, adding that “you’ll see it on our delivery services. You’ll see it on our mobility services. And we are quite actively continuing to innovate in terms of the benefits that we offer … it creates great stickiness and member retention.”

Earnings materials posted by the company show that overall gross bookings were up 26% during the quarter to $30.7 billion, as measured in constant currency. The company said that its trips growth was up 19% to 2.1 billion; the monthly trips per active users grew to 5.4, where it had been 5.3 in the third quarter and five trips in the year-ago period.

“We reached several new milestones this quarter. We crossed 2 billion quarterly trips, and our mobility consumer base exceeded a hundred million for the first time in our history,” said Khosrowshahi.

Uber’s delivery business bookings were up 14% to $14.3 billion. And here, again, Uber One is a tailwind. Khosrowshahi said, “this a very significant structural advantage that is assisting our delivery business. You’ve got our membership business that, again, is adding higher frequency, higher spend, more retention as well.”

Freight Revenues were 43% higher than last year, to $1.5 billion, a marked slowdown from growth rates that had, in previous quarters, been in the triple-digit percentage points. That slowdown, management said, has been reflective of cyclical trends.

Higher Driver Engagement and Higher Earnings

On the driver side of the equation, commentary on the call noted that active mobility drivers also reached an all-time high in Q4, up 35% year on year — 5.4 million people are earning across the platform on a global basis and continues to grow further in January. Khosrowshahi said that 70% of drivers are coming onto the platform to earn money to help combat inflation.

Driver earnings reached approximately $10 billion, up 37% YoY on a constant-currency basis. Driver engagement has benefitted from Upfront Fares and Upfront Destination. Those offerings have, per the CEO, spurred “a noticeable increase in session conversion, with an estimated 4% increase in completed trips in the U.S.” The company aims to roll out upfront fare and destination features in all of its global markets. Management pointed out on the call that there’s still a significant runway to grow market share in mobility, particularly through shared rides (UberX), in two-wheelers, three-wheelers and even taxis.

Management pointed on the call to what it called the “power of the platform,” driven by the cross-promotions between mobility and delivery. “We’re essentially sending free, or cheaper, traffic from one platform to another,” said the CEO.