Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Uber's Q4 2020 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation. There will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance. Please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Balaji Krishnamurthy, Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, David. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to Uber Technologies' 4th quarter and full year 2020 earnings presentation. On the call today, we have Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, and CFO, Nelson Chai. This is Balaji Krishnamurthy from the Investor Relations team. During today's call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including a re-reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, are included in the press release. Supplemental slides and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted to investor.uber.com. I will remind you that these numbers are unaudited and may be subject to change. Certain statements in this presentation and on this call are forward-looking statements. Such statements can be identified by terms such as believe, expect, intend, and may. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.
Actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements we make today, except as required by law. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements. Please refer to the press release we issued today. As well as the risks and uncertainties described in our most recent quarterly report on form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2020, and in other filings made with the SEC when available. Following prepared remarks today, we will open the call to questions. For the remainder of this discussion, all growth rates reflect year-over-year growth and are on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. With that, let me hand it over to Dara.
Thank you Balaji, and thanks for everyone joining us today. Since our last earnings call, the world has made considerable progress in the fight against COVID. While there's still a lot of work to do, we're cautiously optimistic that this progress will continue and in fact accelerate over the next quarters. However long the recovery takes, Uber's business remains well-positioned. Despite renewed lockdowns in Q4, we ended the year with total company growth bookings nearly flat year-on-year in December, with Gross Bookings turning positive in January. Disciplined execution and increased scale in our delivery business allowed us to improve adjusted EBITDA by $161 million year-on-year in Q4. This quarter marks the completion of a series of portfolio actions that began in Q2, with a goal of focusing the company on its two massive core opportunities of mobility and delivery.
We executed 17 transactions in 2020, including acquisitions that increased our run rate Gross Bookings by over $6 billion and divestitures of non-core operations that combined with other cost optimization actions, reduced our annualized EBITDA losses by over $1 billion. These transactions, coupled with disciplined operational execution and continued product innovation have put us in a stronger and more focused foundation heading into 2021. As such, we have increased confidence in our ability to reach breakeven this year while continuing to invest in long-term initiatives close to our core. Looking ahead, our strategic priority in 2021 is to continue to harness the power that our platform, with its multiple and growing product offerings, can uniquely provide. Wherever you need to go whatever you need to get, Uber can help.
We believe our highly engaged consumer base on delivery will drive stronger mobility growth as cities reopen. On the flip side, we expect mobility to become an increasingly powerful acquisition channel for our delivery business. For instance, our redesigned Uber Super App already generated more than 10% of first-time eaters in Q4. We plan to accelerate cross-platform usage through renewed focus on our Uber Pass and Eats Pass membership programs. We believe these will only become more valuable as we add new benefits and verticals like pharmacy and alcohol. Memberships ramped up significantly in Q4 with over 5 million members across 16 countries. We have aggressive global expansion plans in 2021. I'll dive into each of the core segments. First, Mobility, which continues to be affected by lockdowns around the world.
Mobility GBs improved modestly in the fourth quarter, up 15% from Q3 levels, but still down 47% year-on-year. In January, Gross Bookings were down 47% year-on-year, declining 10% month-on-month close to elevated holiday activity in December. We're seeing extremely encouraging trends in APAC and Latin America, with Gross Bookings in those two regions down only 25%-30% in January. Two of our largest markets Brazil and Australia, were down only 10%-20% in January, while Taiwan grew 16% year-on-year. The recovery in these markets demonstrates consumers' pent-up desire to start moving again. While Uber is continuing to gain share versus other modes of transportation. Over the next six months, we'll begin to prepare our business to go from preservation mode to re-ignition.
This means investing in new mobility products such as Uber Reserve, rentals, transit, taxis, and motorbikes, and rolling out new segmented offerings like Uber Comfort. We will focus on re-engaging riders for their second first trips and re-engaging drivers to meet ramping demand. If we do these things right and the public health situation improves as expected, we're bullish that we can deliver strong growth and expanding margins in the H2 of the year. Now turning to delivery, where we continue to execute well against a massive expansion in the category. We narrowed our focus to markets that we consider attractive and where we can win, and we're now number one or number two in nearly the entirety of our delivery footprint.
At the same time, we're scaling our next strategic leg of 10-plus year growth, expanding our offerings into adjacencies beyond food delivery and into broader instant on-demand local commerce. Q4 Gross Bookings grew 128% and reached a $44 billion run rate in December. Revenue more than tripled, and adjusted EBITDA margin as a percentage of revenue improved 100 points year-on-year. We've seen our business accelerate in January to over 150% year-on-year growth as delivery continues to provide the natural hedge in lockdowns. It's become clear that the pandemic has increased consumers' appetite for on-demand delivery of not just food but all goods, and we've taken major steps to address this enormous opportunity. Our acquisition of Cornershop opened up grocery delivery for Uber, where we've rapidly expanded globally.
With Postmates, we bolstered our local commerce capability through their delivery as a service offering that already counts Walmart, Apple, and 7-Eleven as customers. In December, delivery-as-a-service represented 18% of Postmates orders, and we intend to scale this out further along with our Uber Direct product. Last week, we announced our agreement to acquire Drizly, which will add the leading online alcohol marketplace to our portfolio. Drizly is growing at 300% year-on-year and is already profitable on an EBITDA basis. These new initiatives will remain an investment priority going forward and in 2021, we expect to invest $200 million-$250 million pre-integration synergies to grow the business by meaningful multiples. While we leaned into growth, we also made significant progress overall on overall delivery profitability.
In Q4, we had 15 countries generating over $100 million of EBITDA on just over $2.5 Billion of Gross Bookings. We remain confident that delivery will turn EBITDA profitable in 2021, although we will not hesitate to lean in during the H1 of the year. While the external environment remains uncertain, I am more optimistic than ever about Uber's future. We've established the world's largest mobility platform with a leading position in every major region that we operate in. In five years, we've built the world's largest food delivery platform outside of China, which is growing substantially faster than the category, and which we're using to expand into high-potential adjacencies. These two platforms are synergistic and are powered by many common components built by the most talented tech team in the business.
We're lean, we're focused, and we're operating at global scale, and we will innovate relentlessly to make consumers' lives a bit easier and to create more earnings opportunities for drivers, couriers, and our merchant partners. Uber is ready to go. Now over to Nelson for more details on the numbers.
Thanks, Dara. We continue to execute well against a tough operating environment for our mobility business, investing for growth and delivery while improving total company adjusted EBITDA for both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. During the quarter, we completed significant portfolio re-realignment actions. Including our divestiture of ATG and acquisition of Postmates. I will now discuss key operational metrics as well as non-GAAP financial measures. All comparisons are year-over-year and on a constant currency basis. Unless otherwise noted. Total company Gross Bookings were down 4%, but up 16% quarter-over-quarter. Revenue was $3.2 billion, down 15%, but up 13% quarter-over-quarter. Our revenue take rate was 18.5% of Gross Bookings, down 221 basis points year-over-year and down 62 basis points quarter-over-quarter as our business mix continued to shift towards delivery.
Non-GAAP cost of revenue, excluding D&A, increased to 45% from 43% of revenues, down $177 on an absolute dollar basis. Driven by lower volumes in our mobility business. Turning now to non-GAAP operating expenses, which exclude pro forma adjustments such as stock-based compensation and restructuring charges. Operations and support was down $123 million year-on-year, reflecting continued leverage from headcount reduction actions taken in the second quarter. Sales and marketing decreased $209 million as a result of lower marketing and promotion spend in our mobility business. R&D was down $126 million, primarily driven by a decrease in headcount-related spend. G&A was down $80 million year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. Our spend decreased $10 million and improved as a percentage of revenue by 2% points with continued top-line recovery.
Our Q4 2020 total company adjusted EBITDA loss was $454 million, improving $161 million year-over-year and $171 million quarter-over-quarter. I'll provide additional detail on our segments. Starting with Mobility Gross Bookings was $6.8 billion, improved 15% quarter-over-quarter, but was down 47% year-over-year. Revenue of $1.5 billion improved 8% quarter-over-quarter, but was down 51% year-over-year. Revenue take rate of 21.7% declined 90 basis points year-over-year, with a 40 basis point impact from a one-time driver litigation settlement in Q4 and with lower take rate geographies such as LATAM recovering faster than expected.
Despite a significant headwind to our top line performance, mobility adjusted EBITDA was $293 million, or 20% of mobility revenue, improving $48 million quarter-over-quarter. On to delivery. We've seen continued tailwinds related to stay-at-home orders driving delivery Gross Bookings to $10.1 billion, up 128%. We consolidated Postmates in December, which contributed eight points to year-on-year growth. Delivery revenue of $1.4 billion, up 220%, significantly outpacing Gross Bookings growth. Delivery revenue take rate was 13.5%, up 391 basis points year-on-year and up 21 basis points quarter-on-quarter. The year-over-year expansion was driven by higher basket sizes. Improved network efficiencies and an increase in subscription revenue from Eats Pass.
Additionally, we realized 100 basis point benefit year-on-year from business model changes in some countries that reclassify certain payments and incentives as cost of revenue. Delivery adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $145 million, or negative 10.7% of revenue. That represents a $38 million or 5.4% point quarter-over-quarter improvement respectively. Now on to Freight, which grew revenue 43% year-on-year to $313 million, and adjusted EBITDA loss was $41 million. Freight EBITDA margin improved 12% points quarter-over-quarter and year-on-year. Market rates remained elevated in Q4, putting constrained pressure on both industry margins and shipper supply chains. In this challenging environment, we've seen strong adoption of our digital offerings like API Book Loads and Uber Freight Enterprise.
Technology enables to provide shippers real-time and transparent access to carriers. As a result, we saw a 45% quarter-on-quarter increase in active user bases of these products. Additionally, Freight's technology now provides for automated visibility into nearly 80% of loads moved, resulting in better service at lower operating costs. We feel good about the progress that Freight is making, and we are encouraged by the numerous awards the team has won for service and technology from both industry pundits and our larger shippers. Onto ATG and other technology programs, the adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was $72 million. As a reminder, we divested ATG and Uber Elevate during the quarter with both transactions closing in January.
Our Q4 2020 corporate G&A and platform R&D of $489 million, which represents the G&A and R&D not allocated to one of our segments, improved 24% year-on-year and slightly improved quarter-over-quarter on an absolute basis. As a percentage of total revenue corporate G&A and platform R&D improved 3% points quarter-over-quarter as we saw fixed cost leverage. In terms of liquidity, we ended the quarter with approximately $6.8 billion of unrestricted cash equivalents, and short-term investments and have access to over $2 billion from our revolver, providing us with ample liquidity to manage through the recovery ahead. Based on January trends, I'll provide a few comments around our expectations for Q1 performance.
In January, mobility Gross Bookings were at a $25 billion annualized run rate, down 47% year-on-year on a constant currency basis, or down 49% on a reported basis. Covid case loads remain elevated, with associated movement restrictions in many of our largest markets including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and France. We are targeting a mobility take rate relatively flat quarter-over-quarter. Consistent with normal seasonality, although market mix based on Covid cases may impact take rate positively or negatively. Turning to delivery, we'll provide some color around quarter-over-quarter EBITDA progression expectations. Given the continued influx of new consumers to the category, particularly in markets like Europe, we are continuing to lean into delivery opportunities. Including with incremental brand marketing spend, customer acquisition spend. As well as, investments in our growing grocery and other new verticals.
In Q4, incremental spend for grocery Postmates was offset by one-off benefits. During Q1, we expect an incremental investment of roughly $40 million-$50 million towards Postmates, groceries, and other new verticals. For Postmates in particular, we expect to narrow the losses as we move through integration and remain on track to delivering the +$200 million in run rate synergy goals we disclosed last year. As we progress throughout the year. The delivery EBITDA should improve significantly, and we remain confident in achieving break even at some point in 2021. Putting it all together, we expect total company Gross Bookings to return to year-on-year growth in Q1, despite the current COVID impacts in mobility, as delivery continues to drive strong growth.
Based on current mobility Gross Bookings levels and anticipated delivery investments, we expect Uber's Q1 adjusted EBITDA to be flat or down quarter-over-quarter before we start seeing meaningful improvement throughout the rest of the year. We are pleased with the progress we've made in the last year. Uber is now on a stronger footing with a strong liquidity position of nearly $7 billion in cash. While the bulk of our portfolio rational actions are behind us, we will continue to focus on activities that drive value to our shareholders, including monetizing our equity stakes, as we have done recently with a small portion of our DiDi stake, and executing strategic transactions such as Drizly.
We remain on track to turn the EBITDA profitable in 2021, and we are confident that Uber can deliver sustained strong top line growth as we move past this pandemic. With that, we'll open it up for questions.
Your first question comes from the line of Justin Post with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Great. I hope you can hear me okay. I'm actually in an Uber. I got stuck. Couple questions. I guess first-
Justin, you can ask questions from an Uber anytime.
It sounds like, you know, more of your markets have turned profitable for delivery. I'm guessing what is enabling that? Is it scale? Are you finding operational efficiencies? Are any markets at your long-term target? Then I guess a second question, just how are trends in the U.S.? Obviously, you're gonna be compared to your public comps. Just how are you doing on delivery and rides in the U.S. market share-wise? Thanks.
Yeah, sure. I think it's basically on delivery, the general business is scaling. As we bring more restaurants onto the platform, as we bring more eaters onto the platform or couriers onto the platform. Essentially, we get to drive network density. As the network gets more dense. Essentially, a courier has less miles to cover for the average delivery. Our algorithms are getting smarter in terms of routing, in terms of wait time with restaurants and optimizing, you know, every last percentage in order to drive cost per transaction efficiency, which then helps our net revenue and also really helps courier earnings because they are being productive a higher percentage of the time that they are on network. That in addition to just the business scaling up, right?
If you're tripling revenue, I can tell you that we're certainly not tripling headcounts or tripling overheads. So, you just have revenue synergy, which is pretty beneficial. We continue also to benefit from basket size increases and, you know, as basket size increase, the cost of a delivery stays the same and again that accrues to margin as well. I would say there's not a single element that is responsible for the improvement in margins. But it's many elements coming together. Frankly, it's the team and the technology focused on continuing to drive hyper-efficiency in every part of the business.
I think the last part, I would say is that as your customer base, as your established customer base becomes a higher % of your overall customer base. You've seen us increase our membership base from 1 million to 5 million. As you get a higher parcent of members, as you get a higher parcent of customers who have been with you for a period of time, your marketing costs should come down as a parcent of bookings or revenue. We're not there yet. We're leaning in, I think that as I look forward two, three, and four years on the delivery business, there's more efficiency. Right now we're finding a lot of new customers o n the marketing side.
Generally, we are leaning in and also getting the additional benefit of new eaters through our mobility business. As far as the trends versus other players in the U.S., you know, I'd say that no surprises. Obviously, Lyft who's our largest competitor. Released their numbers yesterday. I would say that there are no surprises as it relates to their numbers. They're a strong operator and I would say that generally we see our trends roughly comparable to their trends. Although from an insurance side, we've been pretty consistent at executing well there. So we kinda don't have these surprises, so to speak.
As it relates to the delivery business, you know, we are in the U.S. growing at very significant rates, triple-digit rates. We see January trends in the U.S. actually improving over already strong trends that we saw in Q4. We can't exactly tell how we're doing versus all of our competition in the U.S. But we think that we're more than holding our own. Frankly, there's more to do there with the real focus being on improving our restaurant selection, which I think holds significant upside for us.
Great. Thanks, Dara.
You're welcome. Next question.
Your next question comes from the line of Brian Nowak with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking my question. I have two. First one, Dara, with all the cost reductions and the adjustments you've made to the business throughout 2020, now with the rides business kind of continuing to evolve, how do you think about sort of the long-term rides profitability now that you've sort of removed those costs and the mix of the business continues evolving? The second question on Uber Pass, anything you can share with us about frequency or user behavior of Uber Pass members versus non-members? Then you mentioned sort of being more aggressive to drive that growth of that Uber Pass.
I'll start with Uber Pass, and I'll have Nelson talk about the long-term P&L. As far as Uber Pass goes, listen, we are very early in the development of Pass. I mean, we started leading into Pass middle of last year. We built the Eats Pass essentially on infra that the mainline Uber Pass team had built. As a result, you see pretty significant acceleration. I think the last time we talked to you, we had 1 million paid members, and we got 5 million total members. With that number expected to go up very significantly in 2021. While I don't want to give away competitive information. The frequency of Pass members is significantly higher than the frequency of non-Pass members.
Going out and acquiring Pass members is, while it may be unprofitable in period, if you look at the frequency increases and apply them to some reasonable lifetime value estimates, this becomes a very, very strong profit pool for us that either we can, you know, pull to the bottom line or we can use to reinvest in other appropriate markets. With that, Nelson, you wanna talk on?
Yeah
on margins?
Brian, we have not updated our long-term margin. Again, we believe we'll continue to make progress towards it. As you know, even given the COVID restrictions, as you heard in my prepared comments. We are at 20% in mobility in the fourth quarter. As you know, in the first quarter of last year, we were at higher, at around 30%. We're pretty confident in our ability to do that. The incremental margins we're seeing are kind of in the mid-40s versus Q3 with us continuing to leverage against and get the efficiencies against our fixed cost base.
We're pretty optimistic that as we get more COVID recovery, as people start moving that, you know, We think we're very bullish in terms of the profitability profile for our mobility business.
[crosstalk] Let me just g reat. Thank you both.
The other factor to add there is, you know, Nelson and I are constantly managing the business based on portfolio of kind of profits and opportunities. While we talk about the delivery business and rightly. So, based on the growth of that business right now, as it relates to mobility. When we look at, you know, the Germanys of the world, Japan, Argentina, new markets to get into as we look at the opportunity to power taxi technology and hailables in general. When we think about, you know, the opportunity of shared rides when things open up. Then we look at our transit team. There are many, many growth opportunities in the mobility segment.
I do think that we will take some of the incremental margins that we see in mobility and reinvest in growth opportunities because we expect our mobility business to grow at very attractive rates for year-on- year. I think we're one of the few companies around that can afford to invest in those areas. You know, I think taxis are gonna want more demand. Obviously, you've heard about transit needing help in terms of tech and in terms of cost effectiveness. We wanna help. We wanna be a part of the solution, but it's also a great opportunity for us.
Brian, lastly.
Go ahead, Nelson.
Brian, actually one last thing is I would say that you've heard us talk in the past about where we need to see recovery. In the past, we talked about being, you know, 10%- 20% down in terms of getting towards breakeven. Obviously we have more room now because of the actions we took. Again, we're feeling much better about it. As Dara said, we are going to take some of that profitability and invest back in. It doesn't necessarily change the full year outlook on when we're gonna achieve total company profitability, but we certainly have more degrees of freedom.
Again, Dara covered, and we covered in our prepared remarks, all the actions we took last year, and so we feel very good about how we're set up, moving forward.
Great. Thank you both.
You're welcome. Next question.
Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with UBS. Your line is open.
Thanks so much for taking the questions. Maybe a few on the concepts of what you've already seen in some of the markets with mobility that have started to improve. Curious, just maybe following up on the last answer and some of the comments you made in the prepared remarks. Just what form is that taking in either stoking demand, growing or retaining the user base on the customer side. As opposed to investing more heavily on the supply side and investing a deepening on the supply side in the markets that have recovered and have started the process of recovering? How should we be thinking about that being applied more globally and what we should be watching for in terms of the form those investments might take? Thanks, guys.
Sure, Eric. I think that, you know, the team that we have on the mobility side has dealt with the significant changes in volumes in mobility in pretty incredible way, right. Like Q2, we were able to drive segment EBITDA profitability. As the markets come back. One is that we're seeing both social use cases come back. So, social use cases in a bunch of the markets that have come back are like over 100% year-over-year, and workday commute users come back. The only use case that hasn't come back is airport. The teams are very closely watching the balance between supply, drivers who are coming onto the platform, and demand, which are our riders, who are also coming back onto the platform.
What's really exciting is that the coronavirus and everything that's happened. It's actually changed the nature of some of our riders, using the mobility use case. If you look at. For example, Brazil, we are at 90% plus recovery in Brazil, yet 30% of our riders, who happen to be very, very high value riders. Hasn't even come back. Our business is already 90% back, and then 30% of high-value riders of total riders who happen to be very high value. They haven't even started to ride again. We're seeing some pretty attractive signs. The team have been able to balance the marketplace pretty effectively.
I do think that if I'm worried about one thing going into the H2 of the year. It's are we going to have enough drivers to meet the demand that we're going to have in the mobility segment? I think, you know, this team has proven themselves over and over again, and as the mobility business comes back, we will look to continue to fund some of the new use cases, hailables, transit, et cetera. Frankly, we've been doing that anyway because those kinds of long-term bets are the bets that we should be pushing during good or bad times. Does that answer your question, Eric?
It does. Thanks for the color. By the way, happy New Year to the whole team. Hope everyone's well. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Next question.
Your next question comes from the line of Ross Sandler with Barclays. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. A couple questions on delivery. We've heard some grumblings about increased competition in the Eats business in the U.K., Japan, and Australia. Has your outlook changed at all for those big. Those three big countries? Are they still on track for a break even? Is that $40 million of incremental investment is that for Eats or is that for these adjacencies like Cornershop and Postmates, et cetera? The second one is Drizly. From what we understand, this is a ad marketplace. You kind of break even on the transaction, then the EBITDA is coming from the advertising side. I guess, how does that fit in, are there any practices that they're doing that could be applied to Cornershop, Eats, or the rest of Uber? Thanks a lot.
Got it. I'll let Nelson talk about the investment. As far as the competitive environment goes, listen, the only environment we've known in delivery is competitive. We were relatively late to the game. There were a bunch of marketplace players who had already been in some cases, incumbent. I think based on the results that you're seeing, we are able to make progress, grow the business, grow faster than the category, and improve margins. I think that speaks to the power of the platform. It speaks to the fact that we have access to many common components as it relates to our tech platform, our identity platform, risk, insurance, et cetera.
It speaks to the power of the Uber brand and ops teams who are local and understand a market deeply. I wouldn't characterize the competitive environment as getting any better or worse. I would characterize it as continuing to be intense, but it's been that way since we started. Nelson, do you wanna talk through the investment piece?
Sure, in terms of the investment, I think we said there's going to be probably an incremental of $40 million-$50 million in the first quarter, and that is for Postmates groceries, as well as other adjacencies. In terms of your question on specifically around food delivery, again, you've heard us talk in the past. We have a capital allocation model. We go through it every month. We continue to lean and invest and grow. You are right, we are in very competitive marketplaces as Dara mentioned. But we believe we're winning in places like the U.K. and Japan, where we're seeing, you know, high triple-digit type of growth, what we saw in the quarter, and we are continuing to improve the economics.
Obviously there are some marketplaces like the Australia, as you called out and others that we've called out in the past in terms of not just being very, very strong from a top-line perspective, but also being very good from a margin perspective as well [crosstalk] a nd we continue.
Like, the number of markets that are profitable that we can use to either reinvest or we can use to increase our overall profit profile. Just the quantum number of markets is increasing and the dollars that those markets are contributing to the P&L are also improving. Those are good trends. Again, it's within the context of a very competitive marketplace. With these kinds of category growth, I certainly wouldn't count on it getting any better.
The only thing I would add is that I think you heard in my prepared remarks, we will deliver against the $200 million of synergies on Postmates when we announced the transaction. As those synergies come in. Again, it'll be less in terms of the drag as it is in the first quarter. Again, as Dara mentioned there are some areas that we will continue to invest for growth.
Operator, next question.
Your next question comes from the line of Mark Shmulik with Bernstein. Your line is open.
Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my question. A couple if I may. The first, just wanted to follow up on Eric's question. One of the things you mentioned are in some of those international markets like Australia, where, you know, 30% or those super users haven't returned. Can you share a little bit of color on who has?
Sorry, that was Brazil, to be specific.
Sorry, Brazil, yeah. Can you share color on and who is kind of driving that demand? Is it just other kind of returning users or, you know, any kind of cross-sell that you're seeing from kind of the delivery side as a customer acquisition channel? Second question, just, you know, I think, you called it the Uber Super App. You know, as we just kinda look ahead, any updates on the roadmap there and the timing on how you think about integrating the different pieces into that Uber Super App? Thank you.
Sure. In terms of the user base, I think that it's, you know, it's increasingly become apparent that Uber as a transportation platform is recovering faster than other transportation offerings in most of the markets in which we operate. I think it reflects the investments that we made in safety, the technology that we invest in to make sure that drivers are masked up and, you know, the trust that investors have, sorry, that riders have in the platforms that we're building. We see our service come back faster than taxi. In many cases, we see our volumes come back faster than transit, and it's because of consumer trust, and it's because of investments that we're making. We are, you know, we are seeing new customer acquisition.
It's a customer base that tends to be a bit more price sensitive. Generally, I would tell you that our trips are growing faster than bookings. Generally, if you look at many of these markets, and the consumer who there's a set of consumers, you know, we're lucky enough. Who don't need to go to work, that can work remotely. That's the consumer who hasn't come back. When that consumer comes back. We think it will, it'll be an enormous tailwind cause we'll have a bunch of new customers who have switched over from other forms of transportation, and then we'll have our loyal base coming back as well. We think the setup is actually a pretty good setup.
I think one factor that has been a little bit surprising to us is that we've also seen non-urban riders come onto the platform. With, you know, new use cases, et cetera. In many times we've seen core come back. We've seen kind of, you know, the outer boroughs come back, but we've also seen suburbs come back as well. Again, I think it's because we're a trusted form of transportation. You get a lot of information regarding our platform, and we've invested, and I think we're seeing the results of those investments. What was the second question again?
Just around the Super App and the timeline and roadmap.
Yeah. I don't Again, I don't wanna give away the roadmap. That's competitive. The team is I think there are two factors on, as it relates to the roadmap. One is that we're adding more categories, and as a result, you will see an Uber Super App that is more complete. Then just as important as adding more categories is that we are adding or using machine learning technology to make sure that the choices that we surface to you as either a rider or an eater are the best, most personalized choices. As you can imagine, we have more data than anyone else in the field. We understand not only usage within mobility and within delivery but across the two.
The combination of more choice and more personalization, we think is pretty powerful. You know, the 10% of new eaters that I pointed out in Q4, that was with the Uber Super App being available for the first quarter in Android. Like, that number is gonna go up. What we haven't really driven is delivery back to mobility in a big way. Our focus has been more on mobility to delivery, but we see real potential as far as delivery to mobility or delivery to alcohol or delivery to grocery, and those are all areas that we're focused on. Next question, operator.
Your next question comes from the line of Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan. Your line is open.
Great. Thanks for taking the question. Dara, you may have touched on it briefly on Drizly and the acquisition, but just wondering if you can help us understand more just the rationale kind of from a build versus buy perspective, and then also a little bit more around the unit economics of the business. Thanks.
Yeah. I think for us, as far as build versus buy. It went down to, we got to know the Drizly team. We were super impressed with them. I think that while at a high level, it's easy to say. Well, this is delivery of all things, and it's delivery of food or delivery of grocery or delivery of alcohol. Actually, each of these verticals can be quite idiosyncratic, and it is hard when you have a generalized platform to go in really deep as far as, for example, how do you search for products? As a, you know, as one small example, people who come to the Uber Eats app tend to search restaurant first, merchant first, and then product. People who come to Drizly tend to search product first and then merchant.
You know, what are you looking for? Do you want, you know, IPA? They go product first, then the Drizly team is able to identify the merchants who are able to fulfill that product based on a combination of speed and price, and then you dig, and then you go merchant second. That's just one example of how these two products that seem similar and over a period of time are going to come together. They're actually in these early iterations, and it's the details that really count, quite idiosyncratic, quite different. With alcohol, you've got the regulatory environment, which is different from state to state to state. As you know, we're a highly regulated company on a local basis. We just saw a Drizly team who built fast, who built profitably and also did it the right way.
I think putting together, like, a product that is first class merchant base that is highly penetrated and introducing them to the giant audience that we have. That's a pretty powerful combination, and you've seen it, you know, kind of executed on in other tech companies. I think we will be able to turbocharge Drizly growth, hopefully, and also, you know, leave that team to execute the way that they've been executing, which is at a very high level.
Next question [crosstalk] ? Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
I was just gonna follow up and ask any more color just on how you think about unit economics and take rate in the business.
Yeah. This is Nelson. As you might expect, the take rates, the basket sizes are larger versus the traditional ride or even a food delivery. As Dara mentioned, it is a little bit different because it's mostly a 2P business. What they do is they connect local merchants, if you've not used the product you should. They do a wonderful job. What they do is that, you know, they're competing. They're providing in most cases the courier, if not they do use third-party couriers as well. The economics actually are quite good. As Dara mentioned earlier, they are profitable today.
As you know, they are small, and we think that they have a huge opportunity to continue to grow. Navigating through all of the various state-by-state liquor, if you're in the state of Pennsylvania, you actually can't buy liquor. You can only buy beer and it differs by state. They've done a very, very good job in terms of setting it up. Again, we like the unit economics a lot. The basket sizes are very strong.
Great. Thank you both.
We also think the media opportunity there is pretty interesting as it is in the delivery space generally. Next question, operator.
Your next question comes from the line of Lloyd Walmsley with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Thanks, guys. I have two questions if I can. Just first, can you just talk a little bit more about your strategy for passing along the kind of Proposition 22 costs? Are you passing the entire amount along to customers? Are you keeping it in California? What are you seeing kind of competitors do and customers react? Then the second one, you know, can you talk about Uber Direct? You know, how big of a priority is that for this year? And, you know, besides maybe grocery, what are some of the focus areas in terms of your partnerships? And anything you can share on kind of unit economics for that would be helpful. Thanks.
Okay. I'll cover Proposition 22 cost. First of all, we believe Proposition 22 cost was the right outcome for drivers and riders in Uber, and the price increases are manageable when compared to the 100 plus increases associated with traditional employment that we would've seen us exit most markets in California, and not just us. But our other competitors as well. For mobility, we've increased prices to account for most of the new costs, although we've absorbed a small amount ourselves. For delivery, the cost impacts are larger than mobility. While the price increases have accounted for a majority of the cost to the customer, but we have seen slightly bigger impact than mobility. I guess the short answer is we have seen some costs. We do think it's right.
We've passed a fair amount on to consumers, we've also absorbed a fair sum ourselves. On Uber Direct, as we mentioned the direct business is about 18% of Postmates business in Q4. It's a much smaller percentage of Uber's overall business. Our focus on the enterprise has mostly been as it relates to Uber for Business and now Eats for Business, where we've seen incredible enterprise growth. It's, you know, Bank of America. For example, using Eats for Business. This is actually a, you know, I would consider it a relatively greenfield opportunity for Uber. We have, we focused on initially kinda a consumer to consumer package delivery through Uber Connect, which has been very interesting.
The enterprise business is on where frankly, we're gonna take the lead from the Postmates team, who has built out those capabilities already has merchant relationships with Apple, with Walmart, and many others. With our scale and our geographic footprint, which is broader, we think we can scale that business out quite attractively. The unit economics of the business that we've seen with Postmates are encouraging. And we think that it will be additive business and margins that are generally comparable on a bottom line basis because you're not gonna get kind of revenue net revenue margins that are the same as a marketplace business. From a bottom line, kind of variable contribution margin basis, we think the unit economics are gonna be roughly comparable.
It's a pretty cool, promising business, and we're looking forward to the Postmates team and building on their efforts.
All right. Thank you.
You're welcome. Next question, operator.
Your next question comes from the line of Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Thanks. Two questions. Nelson, can you unpack maybe the quarter-to-quarter decline in the mobility or the decline in mobility take rate? Maybe comment a bit how we should think about it in the first quarter. Dara, I mean, we're all kind of working through our TAM models. Just maybe how are you thinking about ramping grocery versus convenience versus pharmacy versus alcohol, and just how you think about U.S. versus international? Because I think the business is kind of right now a different unit economics by geography. Thanks.
The big driver of the take rate change for mobility is really just mix. You heard Dara talk earlier about the fact that Brazil is almost 85%-90% of where it was pre-crisis. Brazil, which as you know, is one of our larger marketplaces has come back a lot faster than a place like the U.S. and parts of Western Europe. It's really just mix shift related. I think you heard in my prepared comments on the call, we expect take rates to be largely flattish in the first quarter, but again, there could be some variability based on mix shift.
As we see more recovery in some of the markets like the U.S. or like parts of Western Europe, you should see, you know, the mix shift benefit as that happens. As far as the adjacencies and how we think about the adjacencies. Obviously, Cornershop has been a part of our business for longer for a bit of time now. It's a team that again has really built that business quite effectively with a relatively small amount of capital. They have built a pretty efficient cost base and a service that really is driving a significant amount of loyalty as far as their customer base goes.
Listen, I think if I were to order it, I think the grocery opportunity is very significant. When you look at the percentage of consumers who have ordered grocery delivery, have used grocery delivery versus let's say food delivery, actually grocery delivery is substantially behind in terms of adoption than food delivery. We think the opportunity with grocery is significant. We don't think that the markets have been won. We have obviously, the Cornershop team has a big presence already in Latin America. Uber has a very big presence in Latin America. The LatAm markets are absolutely a priority. I think Europe and the U.S. are very high potential markets. In the U.S., I think our approach is gonna be more merchant-led.
You know, we'll look to sign up significant merchants and obviously then we will expand in geographies that match up those merchants. Europe, we're gonna be quite opportunistic there organically through the mainline Uber service. I think grocery, we're kind of working on all fronts but the global scope that we have is unique. We're gonna scale. The Cornershop team has already proven out the unit economics, so it's about taking attractive unit economics, scaling, and really investing and building in the merchant, the merchant relationships. All right. Let's take the next question.
Yes. Your next question comes from the line of Youssef Squali with Truist Securities. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Two questions, please. One is, actually just a follow-on, kind of what are the key issues that still need to be ironed out before you kind of basically, maybe accelerate the investments there beyond what Nelson just said earlier about Q1? Then on Proposition 22 cost, it's now being challenged in court by some drivers and the labor union. Does that worry you? Where are you in your discussions with policymakers in other states. I guess, especially given the new administration? Thanks a lot.
Sure. I think on grocery, I'll keep it simple. We right now on the platform. We have proven with our mobility business being able to drive consumers to our delivery app. Basically for free, the ability to move consumers and audience across this platform because they trust Uber, they trust our brand. We have all their information. They trust us with their payment information. They trust us with their location. We've already. On Proposition 22 cost, we've got Tony West, their Chief Legal Officer on the line. I think, Tony, are you on?
Yeah, I'm on.
Can you comment on?
Sure. Could you just repeat the Proposition 22 cost ? I know it was driver support, but I didn't get the full question.
Yeah. I was just saying that it's basically being challenged in court by, I know at least one labor union and some drivers. Is that something, you know, worries you at this point? Just broadly speaking, where are you in your discussions with policymakers in other states to try to use Proposition 22 cost as a blueprint for other geographies?
Taking that last question first, those conversations are ongoing, and you know, we were very clear after Proposition 22 cost that we thought it was a good model. A good base from which to have conversations about how you have an independent contractor plus model. One that allows for benefits in addition to the flexibility and independence that we know earners prefer. Those conversations are ongoing in various venues around the country. With regards to the lawsuit, you may have seen that the Supreme Court of California actually denied the lawsuit, said it was not properly broadened at the Supreme Court level.
We expect that that lawsuit will probably show up again in some other form in a lower court, but on the merits. It's not one that particularly concerns us.
All right. Thank you.
Operator, let's take the last question.
Certainly. Your last question comes from John Blackledge with Cowen. Your line is open.
Great. thanks. two questions. First, on mobility could you just discuss views on the business recovery over the next two years, maybe parsing out commuting versus business or airport travel? On delivery, how do you view the long-term profit profile for the new verticals relative to each long-term profit profile. Thank you.
Sure. I'll get started on mobility and Nelson. Maybe if you can talk about the profit profile. Listen, I think as far as the mobility recovery goes. This year, the recovery timing is going to be very much dependent on when and how cities open up. While we can't predict quarters, we can certainly predict direction. I think we've proven out in big markets like Brazil and Australia, which is as these markets open up the business comes back. It will, you know, start growing again. You know, this is a business that has grown for many years. It's fundamentally a better way of moving. I think what's really encouraging is that we are seeing a new customer base come onto our platform during these very difficult times.
When you combine that with a customer base who is gonna start going to work again, who's gonna start going out again, you know, our loyal customer base historically, I think you're gonna have a very strong growth profile. There's no doubt in my mind that as we go to look at next year, 2022 or 2023. Our mobility business will grow at substantial double-digit rates. I believe that we will take share from other modes of mobility because we have demonstrated, you know, the safety of the platform, the efficacy of the platform, the ease of use, the dependableness, and the affordability of the platform as well. I'm very, very optimistic as it relates to mobility trends.
What I'm even more optimistic about are the investments that we're making in other modes of transport in helping the transit agencies of the world recover and rebound. Of powering taxis with our routing, our hail, e-hail technology, our pricing technology, et cetera. These, I think, will be incremental positives. Putting all together, I think it adds up to essentially a platform for any kind of transport in your city, and a unique platform in terms of the scale and global scope. You know, I think that travel, well, internal company business travel will probably come back a bit slower, so it may take a couple of years to come back. Companies have cut down on it. They're using Zoom, et cetera. I think that will be a slow return. I think external travel, salespeople going to visit clients.
Once you've got, you know, a salesperson win a client with a personal visit versus, you know, someone who just tries to win a client on Zoom, you're gonna have plenty of folks traveling out, just like they have for year-on-year . Internal travel, business travel may be a little slow to recover, but external business travel. We think will recover very quickly. I think leisure travel will bounce back really quickly and significantly not just this year. But, you know, next two or three years. We're, we're pretty optimistic. Again, we can't predict near-term timing, but when we look over a couple of years. The trends are there. I think we got a great kind of, investment profile as well as profit and cost profile as the business comes back.
Nelson, you wanna take the second question?
Sure. In terms of new verticals in delivery, it's actually too early to comment or be too specific. Hopefully, we've proven to be pretty disciplined in terms of how we view investment. We've been talking about it with our investors and with our, and all of you folks over the past quarters in terms of how we go through our resource allocation. You've seen and you saw during the course of 2020, the number of different actions, we've taken including not just acquiring but also moving away from things that we didn't think made sense from a long-term profit perspective. We are gonna continue to test and try a lot of different things.
You probably heard Dara talk before about the fact that, you know, we really wanna own the next hour. In doing so, we are trying to figure out over the course of the next few years as we move through COVID recovery. What are those things that we have the right to play, and you will see us lean in. As you know, we've announced that we're doing some pharmacy-type things in the place like New York. You've already talked a little bit about Drizly on the call. You've heard us talk a little about Cornershop and grocery. We think there are a number of different verticals that you're gonna see us continue to build on, and it's all about building and bringing in more people into the community.
You've, you know, you hear about how many people we connect with users we have. We will continue to build on it. We will be disciplined in terms of the economics. You heard on Drizly, one of the things we really like was just the basket sizes. You've heard us talk in the past about the way you drive margin is you get scale. You have economies. You get good basket sizes and you can generate margins. We'll continue to Dara .
I mean, just the only thing to add is like, I think that it's pretty simple in that our customer acquisition costs will structurally be lower. All things being equal, than our competitors' customer acquisition costs. In these early markets because, all of these markets are in very, very early adoption, customer acquisition costs tend to be very significant as a percentage of economics. What I'm really excited about with our membership program, now it's 5 million members strong, is that our membership program just becomes more and more powerful. We'll be the only membership program that is providing discounts on food, providing discounts on rides, you know, free grocery delivery, free alcohol delivery, et cetera. We will have the deepest and most meaningful local membership high-frequency local membership model.
What that'll result in is not only a structural advantage in terms of customer acquisition costs, but also hopefully an advantage in terms of customer retention and lifetime value. Underneath all of that, we've built a payments ecosystem. We've built an identity ecosystem. We have teams on the ground in every single one of these cities. Overhead costs and our operational costs should actually be more efficient than any of the other players. Like better CAC, better LTV, more attractive margin profile. You put that together, you have the makings of, you know, we did it in mobility. We did it in food. We're gonna do it in delivery.
Thanks so much. Super helpful.
You're welcome. All right. I think, Balaji, that was the last question, if I'm correct. Is that right?
Yes. Yes.
All right. Great. Just I did wanna say a special thank you to the Uber teams. You know, 2020, I think has been an a super difficult year for the world. It's been a really difficult year for us as a team, but I'm just incredibly proud of how the team stood up. You know, we asked ourselves a question like, "How can we help our community first? How can we help our drivers first, our couriers first?" The team really stepped up this year. We've got a huge amount of work ahead of us. You know, you really stepped up. Thank you for that. As far as our investors go, we will talk to you next quarter, thank you for your interest, thank you for your investment.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.