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Uber Freight’s best EBITDA in years gets little attention

Press release and CEO give the digital brokerage only a passing reference

John Kingston
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Uber Freight was one of Del Monte's largest creditors.

Uber Freight barely got a mention in the parent company’s first-quarter earnings report even though its financial performance was one of the best it has had in several quarters.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the digital brokerage came in at negative $7 million on revenue figures that were less than both the first quarter of 2024 and sequentially from 2024’s fourth quarter. 

That is the smallest EBITDA loss since the company recorded a small EBITDA profit of $1 million in the third quarter of 2022. Since then, Uber Freight quarterly EBITDA losses have been as large as $22 million in 2024’s fourth quarter and $23 million in the first quarter of 2023. 

The EBITDA improvement was not a function of higher revenue. Revenue at Uber Freight was $1.26 billion in the first quarter. A year ago it was $1.284 billion. Sequentially, it was $1.275 billion in the fourth quarter, 1% more than what was recorded in the first quarter.

Uber Freight’s (NYSE: UBER) revenue is about 6% of the gross bookings of its Mobility division. However, revenue to Uber from Mobility, which is different from gross bookings, was $6.5 billion in the first quarter. Uber Freight’s revenue of $1.279 billion – essentially equal to its gross bookings – is about 19.4% of that. 

The Mobility division had EBITDA of approximately $1.75 billion compared to the negative EBITDA of $7 million at Freight.

The only reference to any developments at Uber Freight in either the press release accompanying the earnings or the prepared remarks of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was to the fact that Uber Freight is a customer of the autonomous truck initiative in Texas that has received extensive coverage recently.

There was no reference to Uber Freight on the company’s call with analysts.  

The overall silence connected to the earnings report stands in contrast to its recent customer meeting in Atlanta, with an ambitious growth agenda outlined by Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron. 

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John Kingston

John has an almost 50-year career as a journalist, most of them covering commodities and markets. The largest part of his career was spent at Platts, now part of S&P Global Energy. He created the Dated Brent benchmark, now the world’s most important crude oil marker. He was Director of Oil, Director of News, the editor in chief of Platts Oilgram News and the “talking head” for Platts on numerous media outlets, including CNBC, Fox Business and Canada’s BNN. He covered metals before joining Platts and then spent a year running Platts’ metals business as well. He was awarded the International Association of Energy Economics Award for Excellence in Written Journalism in 2015. In 2010, he won two Corporate Achievement Awards from McGraw-Hill, an extremely rare accomplishment. He was awarded the 2020 Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah International Energy Award for Lifetime Achievement for the Advancement of International Energy Journalism.