Welcome to the 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders for Uber Technologies. I'd now like to turn it over to Dr. Ron Sugar, Independent Chairperson of Uber's Board of Directors.
Thank you, Operator. This meeting will now come to order. I am Ron Sugar, Independent Chairperson of the Board of Directors of Uber Technologies. I will preside as Chair at this meeting, and Tony West, our Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, will serve as Secretary of the meeting. Along with my fellow directors and executive officers of the company, I would like to welcome you to our 2025 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We appreciate your attendance, your interest, and your support of Uber. This Annual Meeting of Stockholders is being held pursuant to the bylaws of the company and written notice to all stockholders.
I'll remind all stockholders to kindly observe the rules of conduct for this meeting, which are posted on the virtual meeting site and some of which I'll highlight now.
The only business matters to be considered at the Annual Meeting are the matters set forth in the Notice of Annual Meeting of Stockholders and 2025 Proxy Statement dated 24 March 2025. Only our stockholders of record, as of the record date 13 March 2025, are permitted to vote. We have allotted time for Q&A to allow us to answer questions from as many stockholders as possible. We've received questions in advance of the meeting and will go through them before moving on to the live questions if time permits. If we can get to live questions during the meeting, we will limit each stockholder to one question with two minutes for each question.
We do not intend to address any questions that are, among other things, irrelevant to the business of the company or to the business of the Annual Meeting, derogatory or otherwise in bad taste, or not otherwise suitable for the conduct of the Annual Meeting. Subject to the rules described above, we will post answers to a representative set of questions that we are unable to get to on our investor relations website following the meeting. Recording of the meeting is strictly prohibited.
Now, I would like to introduce each of our directors who are standing for election today: Dara Khosrowshahi, who also serves as our Chief Executive Officer; Revathi Advaithi; Turqi Alnowaiser ; Ursula Burns; Robert Eckert; Mandy Ginsberg; John Thain; David Trujillo; Alex Wynaendts ; and myself, Ron Sugar. Also attending this meeting are representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers, our independent registered accounting firm.
Now, I will turn it over to Tony for the formal portion of today's meeting.
Thanks, Ron. I'm Tony West, the company's Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary. We're conducting this meeting in accordance with our bylaws and the rules of conduct, which are posted on the virtual meeting site. We have received an affidavit of mailing from Broadridge Financial Solutions certifying that notice of this meeting was given and sent to stockholders of record as of 13 March 2025, via the Notice of Internet Availability of Proxy Material, which Broadridge commenced distributing to stockholders on 24 March 2025. In addition, the Board of Directors has appointed Kathy Wieden to serve as the Independent Inspector of Election for this meeting.
Her oath of office is with the secretary of the meeting and will be included with the minutes of this meeting. I also have a copy of the 2024 Annual Report, which includes financial statements certified by PwC.
A copy of this Annual Report was sent or made available to each stockholder entitled to vote at this meeting, and an electronic copy of the Annual Report is available on the website used to access this meeting. The notice of meeting and the affidavit of mailing, together with attachments, and the 2024 Annual Report will be filed with the minutes of this meeting. On 13 March 2025, the record date of this Annual Meeting, there were outstanding and entitled to vote a total of 2,091,258,114 shares of common stock.
I've been informed by the Inspector of Election that there are 1,711,250,348 shares of stock represented by proxy, or approximately 82% of all the shares entitled to vote at this Annual Meeting. The shares so represented exceed 50% of the total shares entitled to vote at this meeting and thus constitute a quorum present to conduct our meeting today.
The polls for voting on matters described in our proxy statement for presentation at the Annual Meeting are now open. All Uber stockholders entitled to vote at this meeting have the ability to do so. If you are a stockholder entitled to vote and have not yet voted, or if you want to change your previously cast vote, please do so via the website used to access this meeting. Please remember that if you've already voted by proxy, it's not necessary to vote again. After voting has concluded on all matters on the agenda, we will close the polls, and the Inspector of Election will provide her preliminary report. We'll move now to a review of the proposals.
The first proposal to come before the meeting is the election of directors.
At this meeting, we are seeking to elect the 10 directors listed in the proxy statement for a one-year term expiring at the 2026 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Information about the nominees is contained in the proxy statement. Since no other nominations were received prior to the deadline established in the company's bylaws, no additional nominations may be made at this meeting, and I declare the nominations to be closed. We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I'll pause briefly. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next proposal.
Proposal 2 asks stockholders to approve an advisory resolution on the fiscal year 2024 compensation of the named executive officers, all as described in our proxy statement. Now, this proposal is advisory.
Although non-binding, the vote will provide information to our Compensation Committee and our board of directors regarding investor sentiment about our executive compensation philosophy, policies, and practices, which our Compensation Committee and our Board of Directors will be able to consider when making future executive compensation decisions. We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I will pause briefly. Seeing none, we'll move on to the next proposal.
The next matter to come before the meeting is the ratification of the appointment of PwC as the company's independent registered public accounting firm. The Board of Directors recommends the ratification of the appointment of PwC to serve as the company's independent registered public accounting firm and to audit the company's financial statements for the fiscal year ending 31 December 2025.
We did not receive any questions on this proposal prior to the meeting. Are there any questions on this proposal now? I'll pause briefly. Seeing none, we'll move on. The polls are about to close, so if you've not yet voted, please do so. I will pause for three minutes now to allow votes to be cast, and during this time, we will play a video clip highlighting Uber's platform.
Look, from the very beginning, football's been a conspiracy to make us hungry. Now, let me tell you where it all started.
We'll call this a pigskin. Make people crave bacon.
Everybody loves bacon.
I love bacon.
Bacon.
Ever ask yourself how Buffalo got a team?
These wings deserve a team.
Yeah.
I figured out a good team name for Buffalo, Bill.
Buffalo.
Buffalo.
They'd do anything to sell food.
Do I have to be called refrigerator?
Yes.
Even Peyton was in on it.
Omaha!
Steak.
Omaha!
Steak.
They're still at it.
This year, we got a halftime show presented by an apple.
A stadium named after a salad.
Matthew.
Yeah.
Sorry, sir. You want me to make a movie about a football conspiracy?
Come on, Greta.
Bacon's in.
Everybody loves bacon.
No one believes that football was invented to sell food.
When football makes you hungry, order Uber Eats.
Sir, we've hacked 21 satellites, and now we're one.
One step closer to world domination.
Yeah, yes, sir.
Do you know how I know this? Because that's all we ever do. All day long. I'm tired. I've had enough.
What's up? What's up?
Everyone expects me to be bad all the time. All the intimidating stares and the frowning. The frowning is really aging me, you know?
You look young.
Absolutely gorgeous, sir.
Whoops.
Monday, Monday, happy days.
Tuesday, Wednesday, happy days.
Thursday, Friday, happy days. Saturday, what a day.
When you've done enough, Uber Eats.
Oh, it's such a perfect day. I'm glad I spent it with.
First date in Chicago, and I got stood up.
Oh, such a perfect day. You just keep me hanging on.
I'm on my way.
I'm on my way.
I'm on my way, Doug.
I'm on my way.
Oh, yeah, I'll tell you something. I think you'll understand when I say that something. I want to hold your hand. Now, let me hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand.
Since everyone has had the opportunity to vote, the polls are now closed. The Inspector of Election has delivered her preliminary report, and I will now announce the preliminary results. Mr. Chairman, based on the Inspector of Election's preliminary report, the following are the meeting results, including the preliminary vote counts. Each of the 10 nominees for director has been duly elected as a director of the company to serve for a one-year term that will expire in 2026 with approval of more than a majority of votes cast.
The resolution on an advisory basis for the compensation of our named executive officers for fiscal year 2024 has been approved by approximately 85% of votes present and entitled to vote.
The ratification of the appointment of PwC as the company's independent registered public accounting firm has been approved with an approval of 99% of votes present and entitled to vote. We will file the final report of the Inspector of Election with the records of this meeting. We expect to report the results of the voting on a Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within four business days of this meeting. Ron?
Thanks, Tony. That concludes the formal portion of this meeting. The meeting is now adjourned. I will now turn it over to Dara to provide a business presentation, which will be followed by our Q&A discussion.
Thank you, Ron. I'm Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's Chief Executive Officer. Before I begin, I'd like to pause for a moment here and let everyone review the disclaimers in regards to this presentation. All right. Now that you've had that chance, I'd like to start by thanking everyone for joining us today and supporting our company. Our mission at Uber is to reimagine the way the world moves for the better. We aspire to be the default choice for the movement of people and things and for flexible earnings globally.
In service of that mission, we built the largest mobility and delivery platform in the world with operations in over 70 countries and more than 15,000 cities, through which we serve multiple multi-trillion-dollar markets across mobility, delivery, and logistics.
We are in a unique position of having a durable business model with key competitive advantages, which can adapt to varying economic environments and with highly synergistic business segments, which was on full display this last year in 2024. I'm very proud of our performance in 2024, which reflected the underlying strength of our business and strong execution. We've grown our gross bookings 20% annually from $65 billion in 2019 to $163 billion in 2024, while our adjusted EBITDA has improved by over $9 billion to reach $6.5 billion in profits in 2024.
In 2024 alone, we grew our gross bookings by 21% on a constant currency basis, while growing profitability by 60%. We also achieved our first quarter of over $1 billion in GAAP operating income.
We converted our adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow at over 100% rates and returned over $1 billion to our shareholders through share repurchase. This combination of profitable growth at scale, strong cash flows, and accelerating capital returns puts us in rarefied air for companies of our size. We are delivering this all while making investments across our business to capture massive long-term opportunities ahead. With our mission and communities in mind, we have been executing against our strategy to build best-in-class products and then amplify them with the power of the platform.
As we scale, that power has become even clearer. Put simply, we can acquire customers at a lower cost and generate a higher lifetime value than our competitors. It also means that we can bring new products to the market more quickly and more efficiently than others.
We'll continue to relentlessly innovate, building world-class products for consumers, drivers, couriers, businesses, and, of course, advertisers. Now, zooming into our recent performance, in Q4 2024, we delivered an excellent quarter with all-time highs for trips, gross bookings, and adjusted EBITDA. In fact, our growth rates in Q4 accelerated across massive monthly active platform consumers, trips, and gross bookings, demonstrating our ability to deliver growth at scale. We now have over 8 million earners and 171 million monthly active platform consumers, as well as over 2 million B2B partners.
Our Q4 gross bookings increased 21% year-on-year on a cost and currency basis to $44.2 billion, while our adjusted EBITDA grew 44% year-on-year to $1.8 billion. These results were driven by strong growth and expanding profitability in both our mobility and delivery businesses.
Our exceptional performance in 2024 was fueled by strong product innovation, a relentless focus on operational excellence, and leveraging the power of our platform. We sharpened our focus on the core, including our UberX and online food delivery business, through geographical expansion, penetrating sparse markets, and investing in affordability and selection. We also continue to expand our growth-best portfolio, driven by mobility products like Reserves, Hailables, and Shared Rides, as well as from grocery retail and Uber Direct and Delivery.
We also generated tremendous momentum with our Uber One membership program, which reached 30 million members at the end of 2024, up approximately 60% year-over-year. On top of all this, we continue to grow our advertising business, accelerating adoption of AI to improve productivity and the customer experience, and expanded profitability and margins as we balanced our investments with prudent capital management.
And speaking of AI, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the critical role we played in advancing the autonomous ecosystem. 2024 was a pivotal year for AV technology and for Uber's role commercializing that technology. We advanced our AV strategy with multiple new partnerships, which now total 15, including a first international launch and the expansion of our multi-year strategic partnership with Waymo. We believe that AVs can open up a trillion-dollar TAM in the US alone, which is tremendously exciting. While AV technology is advancing, we believe commercialization will take significantly longer.
Several pieces of the go-to-market puzzle still need to come together, including consistently superhuman safety, enabling regulations, cost-effective hardware, excellent on-the-ground operations, and a high utilization network. Uber's unique capabilities across technology, operations, demand generation, and fleet management all give us conviction that Uber will be the indispensable go-to-market partner for AV players.
We're excited to prove this out in the coming months and years. As exciting as autonomous is for the long-term future of our business, we know just how important it is that we deliver on our near and midterm commitments to our shareholders. At our investor update in 2024, we outlined how over the three years through 2026, we expect to deliver a gross bookings CAGR of mid to high teens and adjusted EBITDA CAGR from high 30s to 40% with 90% or greater annual free cash flow conversion. We're now one year into that three-year outlook, and I'm pleased to say that in 2024, we cleanly exceeded our commitments on all three components of that framework.
We're very happy with this performance, but we know that we've got more work to do to ensure we deliver against these commitments over the next two years.
While the macro backdrop is rapidly evolving, we view our business as one that can sustain industry-leading growth at huge scale while continuing to drive substantial operating leverage to the bottom line and capital returns to shareholders. I'd like to close by looking ahead. Our team is focused on several key priorities that will propel us forward. First, we'll stay laser-focused on the core, including making mobility and delivery more affordable, a priority which is becoming more important in the current economic backdrop.
At the same time, we plan to unlock additional growth by expanding our services in low-density markets. Of course, these goals sit hand in hand with our relentless focus on service quality and excellence.
Second, we're planning to lean into innovation, including supercharging our portfolio of growth bets, leveraging AI across our businesses to benefit our customers and employees, and further enhancing our Uber One membership program with new benefits and offerings. Lastly, continuing to execute brilliantly on our AV strategy remains a top priority. We're focused on providing a best-in-class experience for our customers and partners in our current AV deployments, while at the same time expanding and deepening our partnerships and making prudent investments to seed a diverse and healthy AV ecosystem.
In summary, we're tremendously excited about our future. At Uber, we have leading global positions in multiple multi-trillion-dollar categories, and at the same time, we're making disciplined investments in compelling sustainable growth opportunities that we see ahead of us.
And the power of the platform will continue to deliver operational leverage paired with compounding growth to deliver significant free cash flow generation at scale. We are looking forward to continuing to deliver on our commitments and furthering our momentum in 2025. Thank you again for joining. With that, Tony, why do we not open it up for questions?
Sounds good. Thanks, Dara. So we would like to invite you to ask any questions you may have regarding Uber and its business. We ask that you please follow the instructions provided on the virtual meeting screen, and we will attempt to answer as many questions as time allows. As a reminder, if we are unable to answer any questions pertinent to the meeting due to the time constraints we have, we will post answers to a representative set of questions after this meeting on our investor relations page, which you can find at investor.uber.com. As noted in the rules of conduct, only appropriate questions will be addressed.
And with that, we will turn first to the questions submitted by stockholders prior to the meeting. Our first question comes from Harsh Shah. Why is executive compensation so high at Uber? Ron?
Thanks, Tony. This is Ron. I can take that one. Your board of directors seeks to ensure that Uber's compensation is competitive in order to attract and retain the best executives to propel the company's performance forward. We then tie their compensation to the performance of the company so our executives' incentives are aligned with our shareholders' incentives. Our executives' compensation, including our CEO's compensation, is at market levels and is comparable to the compensation of our peer companies. Uber reviews compensation annually for all employees, including executives.
Our approach aligns pay with performance and ensures competitiveness through annual benchmarking and performance evaluations. Our executive pay program is designed to attract and retain top talent, align incentives with long-term shareholder value, reinforce Uber's mission and goals, and link compensation to the company's short and long-term performance objectives.
The board's compensation committee is guided by market data and an independent consultant, and it sets executive pay based on peer benchmarks, business strategy, governance trends, and shareholder feedback. Importantly, much of our executive compensation is long-term and performance-based, meaning it is at risk and tied to company performance. The figures shown in the proxy reflect SEC-mandated calculations, which include, in some cases, complex accounting for stock awards. These may show large year-over-year increases that reflect valuation changes and not necessarily issuance of more shares or higher pay decisions.
More detail on our executive compensation program and the accounting complexities involved in valuing compensation is available in our proxy statement.
Thanks, Ron. Our next question comes from John Doe, who asks, "What are Uber's strategies for ensuring fair compensation and support for drivers, drivers who are essential to the business and often use their own vehicles?" Dara?
Yeah, great question. For perspective, Uber is the largest source of work in the world. Our platform is available in over 70 countries, and drivers are absolutely essential to the Uber platform. Our focus is really on providing them with a great experience and ensuring that they've got opportunities for good and fair compensation. A key part of this is actually transparency and giving drivers the tool to make informed decisions that fit with their choices and their own lifestyles, for example.
In most countries globally, including in the US, we show drivers fare and trip details upfront before they accept a trip, including where the trip starts, where it's ending, which empowers them to choose the trips that work best for them.
On top of that, we provide drivers insights into their earnings, dashboards to track their performance, real-time information about demand, what the opportunities are in the cities in which they operate. And of course we'v e got industry-leading safety features and support, including in-app support and built-in safety features like the choice to record your ride with audio or video. We also know that flexibility is a very big reason. It's the major reason why drivers choose Uber. Many drive part-time to fit their lives.
And protecting that flexibility is something that we feel very, very strongly about. We are actively advocating with policymakers and others in the industry to improve on safety and transparency and also ensure fair earnings opportunities for driving while preserving their flexibility.
Last, and certainly not least, we know that our drivers are often using their own vehicles, which come with their own costs and considerations, like gas, like maintenance. Through our Uber Pro Rewards programs and a number of other partnerships, we offer our drivers discounts and resources to help manage and reduce those expenses, special deals on repairs in terms of buying cars, financing, etc. We work with industry across a broad spectrum of industry partners to look to bring the cost of vehicle ownership and maintenance down for drivers to allow them to kind of keep more of their bottom line, so to speak.
All right.
All right, Tony, next one.
Our next question is from JJ Rivet. What steps has Uber taken to maximize and increase driver earnings? Is there a dedicated group of advisors or individuals at Uber who are responsible for this? Dara, does Uber view this as a priority?
Yeah, so good question. Helping drivers maximize their earnings is one of our top priorities at Uber. It's something we think about constantly. For drivers to have healthy earnings and flexibility essentially attracts more drivers to the platform. We tend to be a supply-led platform, which is the more drivers on the platform, the better our ETAs are, the quicker the pickup times, etc. We absolutely think about earnings and how they interact with the number of drivers on our platform. We've seen really positive results from our efforts. If you look just last year, drivers and couriers on our platform earned a record-breaking $72 billion globally.
For perspective, that was up 22% year- on- year, and actually grew faster than our overall business, i.e., our overall gross bookings growth.
Just to give you some additional context, in the US in particular, drivers are currently earning about $32 per hour that they are active on the platform, which obviously we think is very attractive. Now, beyond the features that I mentioned in response to the prior questions, we continue to introduce more and more enhancements and features for our drivers. Just last year, we rolled out over 20 new features designed specifically to enhance the driver experience and to support earnings as well.
A couple of examples are improved rider verification, Record My Ride safety feature, which I mentioned, making fees generally even more transparent, and of course, a fresh redesign of the Uber Driver app.
The goal behind all these enhancements is to really empower drivers, giving them better information so they can make the best decisions about when, where to drive, which trips to accept, and ultimately help them boost their earnings potential kind of on their own terms as well. Lastly, yes, we do have dedicated teams within Uber whose primary focus is on driver earnings, looking at the data, developing new tools for drivers, and engaging in the broader conversation around flexible work and how people earn on platforms like ours.
All right. Next question comes from Thomas Scharbrumm. Why did you allow your CEO and Uber to donate $2 million to the inauguration of President Trump?
Yeah, Thomas, I'll answer that question, which is Uber's donated pretty consistently to inaugural funds, including for President Biden's. We're very much a part and a fabric of cities and daily life, and we think it's important to show up for major moments like this to demonstrate our support as we have for the past couple of presidencies.
All right. Next question we have is from H Saraya. "Can you keep the proxy voting simple and save shareholders' time by voting for all board members with one click instead of having shareholders tick mark their votes one by one?" We were just talking about that, Dara.
Yeah, we were here. It took us a while to get through the proxy. Listen, we're committed to ensuring that the proxy process is straightforward, it's efficient, but also we need to comply with the applicable legal and regulatory requirements. The design of the proxy card, including how director elections are presented, is governed by SEC rules and best practices that are intended to protect your rights, the shareholder rights.
SEC regulations specifically require that shareholders are given the opportunity to vote for, against, or abstain on each individual nominee. We also think that is consistent with best governance practices and encourages giving shareholders a clear individual say on each director, promoting transparency and board accountability. So it takes some time, but that time is worth it for us to make sure that our shareholders' voice is heard. Good question.
Yep. Our next question is from Clementi Moneta. "Would you think that this is just the start of a magnificent performance over the next few years? And where do you see Uber in 5, 10, 20 years from now?
Yeah. Listen, I'm hoping that the magnificent performance continues. We don't have a crystal ball, so to speak, for the future, but we certainly try to execute as best we can. The fact is that the opportunity that we've got at Uber is enormous. We operate at a cross-section of multiple multi-trillion dollar markets across mobility, across delivery, across logistics as well. As a scale industry leader with scaled operations and structural advantages that are difficult to replicate, we think we're incredibly well positioned to compound growth and profitability for years to come as customers increasingly turn to services like ours for transportation and delivery needs.
Most of our competition are kind of pure plays. They're either in transportation or delivery. Our being in both, we think, provides a pretty significant advantage.
We're also really excited about the potential for autonomy to make our streets safer and to introduce more people to the power of the Uber platform. We think that there's going to be a hybrid marketplace of human drivers and autonomous vehicles for some time. We think that that hybrid marketplace is going to be best equipped to serve demand for the foreseeable future. We think Uber is one of the leaders in transportation, the leader in transportation, is really best positioned to make this hybrid marketplace reality and y ou're seeing it live, for example, in Austin now.
If you choose an Uber in Austin, you might get a dispatch with a traditional driver, but you might also get a Waymo as well. That's a real-life example of the hybrid marketplace in play today in Austin.
So I would encourage shareholders to try it out if you're in town. Now, as a reflection of the confidence that we have in our business, we did last year, February 2024, announce our inaugural share repurchase program. It was a repurchase program at a size of $7 billion. By the end of 2024, we'd already executed over $1 billion worth of buybacks. In January 2025, we announced an accelerated share repurchase program to retire an additional $1.5 billion of our common stock. So we're big believers of the company. The opportunity is significant.
We think we've got a terrific management team here. We have a strong strategic position from which to execute. With our buybacks, we're putting our money where our mouth is, so to speak, and looking over a period of time to reduce our share count.
Thank you for the question.
Yeah, Clementi, thanks for the question. Dara, our next question comes from Mayank Meda. "Why doesn't Uber have customer care in the Pacific region? Local competitors are winning business from Uber due to the lack of customer care.
Yeah, Mayank, we do have customer care. We provide support for all customers who use our mobility or delivery platforms in the Asia-Pacific region and really all over the world. The support options include in-app self-serve. There is a help center. We have 24 by 7 phone service, more and more powered by AI or assisted by AI, so to speak. We really aim to match a customer's need with appropriate support and tailor the mode of support offered, whether it is through the help center, whether it is email, live chat, or over the phone. We want to give you the most suitable resolution method, so to speak.
To the extent that you weren't able to find customer care in the Pacific region, we'll take note of that, and we'll make sure that we take a look at our products to make certain that customer care, if needed in those circumstances, is easily found. We'll take a note back to our product folks, Mayank, to make sure that when you're in the APAC region or anywhere in the world, you need some help, we're there for you.
Great. Joe Mamone gives us our next question. "When will Uber start paying a dividend?
Yeah, Joe, it's a great question. We have not declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock as of now. It was just a couple of years ago that Uber wasn't profitable, so we certainly weren't in a position to pay a cash dividend. At this point, I'd say, as we think about our capital allocation first, we intend to retain any future earnings to finance operation and expansion of our business. At this time, we don't expect to declare or pay any cash dividends in the near future. We could and will evaluate a dividend along other kind of capital allocation plans.
Right now, we think that the best way to return capital to our shareholders is through the buyback plan that I referenced in the last question, the $7 billion buyback plan. We've been through $1 billion last year.
We announced the ASR $1.5 billion this year. We think at this point, you should look for us to kind of fund organic growth, buybacks, and of course, M&A. We do not see a dividend in the near term, but it is something that we will continue to discuss as a board.
Next question comes from Brian Kingsley. "It's exciting to see Uber's growing involvement in autonomous vehicle partnerships. Could you provide some insight into the measures Uber is taking to ensure its commitment to safety as AVs are integrated into the platform?
Yeah, it's a great question. We are incredibly excited about the potential for autonomous vehicles to make transportation more reliable, to make it more affordable, and most importantly, safer. Ensuring safety is critical to maintaining progress, as we know that severe safety incidents that a human driver could have easily avoided are likely to set back the entire industry as it relates to AV. So we have to be very, very careful as far as how we go forward. And as a result, of standards for safety with autonomous rides, those standards are extremely high.
In fact, we describe that bar as a superhuman level, meaning that AVs will need to be orders of magnitude safer than the average human driver to earn the consumer's trust and to be deployed on our platform.
Across all of our AV operations, both inside and outside the US, our AV partners share detailed information regarding any safety incidents that occur both on and off the Uber platform. Within the US, we've partnered with a number of AV developers, including Waymo, Nuro, Aurora, and others generally and on the safety front. Underpinning these partnerships is our conviction that these companies', that the company is responsible and deliberate safety approaches, which we believe are setting the standard for the industry.
It is really kind of a team effort amongst us and our partners, but we do want to make sure, just like we want to make sure that every single human driver who's on our platform is safe, background checked, licensed, etc. , we do also want to make sure that any AV partners that we have on our platform are the same, safe, and from our standpoint, safe on a superhuman basis.
Larissa Sanchez has our next question. "The Uber for Teens program has been very well received in my community. Now that it has expanded to over 50 countries, I'm curious if you could share some information on which markets outside of the United States have seen the most success with this offering.
Yeah, Clarissa, I am glad that it has been very well received in your community. I tell you that it's definitely one of our most popular launches in recent memory. We are super pleased with the growth and traction for Teens since we first launched a product just less than two years ago. We are seeing excellent trends across pretty much every single market that we have launched Teens. The one country I call out that's been especially strong is Brazil, where we launched Teens a bit over a year ago. Our business in Brazil tends to be very strong. We got a great local team there.
While we haven't shared specific stats by country, Brazil is already approaching the US on Teen trip volumes despite launching several quarters later, which is testament to how the Teens product is resonating with consumers and families across the globe, not just in the US but it' s been a great product. We really turn on a bunch of the different safety features that we have introduced over a period of time. And is a product that a lot of our employees use themselves, and it is a product that we're quite proud of. It is great to see that it is resonating in your community as well.
Thanks for the question, Clarissa. The next one comes from Sean Ridley. "What are the next overall metrics that you plan to surpass in the Uber Eats category?
Yeah, Sean, we're super excited about Uber Eats. The business has a ton of momentum. It exited 2024 with a lot of momentum. We delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of high teens growth on a constant currency basis. We crossed $20 billion in gross bookings in a single quarter for the first time in our company's history, and f or context, we've approximately doubled our delivery gross bookings just over the past four years.
At the same time, delivery profitability continues to improve steadily, and we achieved record highs in Q4 for both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin within our delivery business, even within the context of continuing to invest aggressively in the business.
As we look forward, we're working really hard to deliver category-leading growth for years to come, we hope, through a range of initiatives, including continued investments in affordability, increasing our selection of merchants, expanding our presence in sparser markets and new geographies, leveraging our unique platform benefits and best-in-class membership program, and then making sure that we are as reliable as far as a leading player, making sure that you get your food on time every single time.
Of course, while our core food delivery business generates the majority of our gross bookings today in that sector, we're also really excited about our progress and potential in grocery and retail and Uber Direct, which, as a reminder, is a business that helps merchants fulfill orders through their own online platforms.
We're looking forward to continuing to share key milestones with you as we continue to build on our industry-leading scale and delivery.
Our next question is from Lee Whitman. "With regards to Uber One membership, what initiatives are you most excited about to drive adoption and higher penetration of gross bookings?
Yeah, so a little bit of a review in terms of our membership program, our Uber One program. We have reached over 30 million total members in Q4, which is up 60% year-on-year, and up 5 million in terms of the number of members just from the prior quarter. If any of you shareholders listening to this call are not an Uber One member, I would encourage you to join. It is a terrific deal with benefits, not just from delivery, but mobility as well. Really, the growth has been driven by great execution by the team, and in particular, adding new benefits.
Some of the recent examples I call out are upgrades to priority delivery, which means faster delivery times and more matches with top-rater shoppers on grocery orders.
On the mobility side, we've recently introduced some new travel and commute benefits, and I'm super excited about some more new mobility benefits that we're planning to roll out in 2025 that are going to further enhance the membership program. In fact, expanding our mobility benefits is one of the key membership priorities where we see significant opportunity to increase the percentage of mobility gross bookings penetration generated by members. The penetration that we have in gross bookings for delivery are significantly higher than the penetration of mobility. We're working diligently to move mobility gross bookings penetration up on a year-on-year basis as well.
At the same time, we're continuing to roll out membership to new countries. Uber One is now available in all of our delivery countries. That's 34 countries in total. In fact, in Q4 alone, we launched Uber One in six new countries.
We continue to like the signals that we're seeing on engagement and retention of Uber One members. Members continue to spend three times more than non-members per month. When users become members, we see a significant increase in their multi-product usage. This is, for example, they're using delivery and mobility or delivery and grocery, etc.. These are the multiple products that we've got, which all are important drivers of lifetime value for our users. Members tend to have higher lifetime value. Multi-product consumers tend to have lifetime value. All this adds to kind of the platform value that we've got.
These signals are giving us the conviction to continue to lean into membership in 2025. I expect even beyond that. We are very excited to share more in the coming quarters as the teams continue to innovate and continue to grow our membership program.
Malcolm Duffy has our next question. "We've seen Uber partner with players like Instacart and Delta recently. What's your broader partnership strategy?
Yeah, it's a great question. We're very excited to have a lot of fantastic partners across our lines of business. You know, we have the greatest global scope than any of our competitors. We work across more business lines than any of our competitors. So we have the opportunity to have more partnerships, so to speak, than any of the other players in our space, and w e can work across multiple fronts with our partners as well. So not only do we have the opportunity to have the breadth of partnership, but also depth of partnership because there are so many more surfaces for us to work with with the various partners that we've got.
For us, we think about partnerships as a great way for us to deepen loyalty and stickiness with our users.
In particular, what we're looking to do is to generate incremental trip activity amongst our high-value users. These are the highest lifetime value users. They add a ton of value across our platform and marketplace, including for the merchants and advertisers that engage in the platform as well. You mentioned two of our new partners, both of which highlight the value that we're creating both for consumers and merchants. A couple of other partners that I would highlight that we've announced over the past year include Toast, OpenTable, and Otter, with which we continue to work and kind of deepen our partnership, so to speak.
Now, another key component of our partnership strategy is autonomous vehicles, which you heard me talk about earlier. Our AV partners are crucial for providing the technology and software for powering the future of mobility.
It's something that we're intensely focused on in terms of taking that technology and making sure it's safe and then commercializing it through our global marketplace. You might have seen just in the past few weeks, we've announced several new or expanded partnerships. These include partnerships with Volkswagen, with May Mobility, WeRide, and Momenta, in addition to the recent launch of fully autonomous rides in Austin in partnership with Waymo. For folks who are living in Atlanta, you can also sign up in Atlanta for Uber/Waymo rides, which we're very excited about.
Now to sum it all up, we really do view partnerships as crucial to driving value and engagement on our platform. We got many, many constituents who engage with us, whether it's riders or eaters or drivers or couriers or merchants.
And then there are many others, including advertisers, AV tech developers, and fleet managers, where we can work together to generate win-win outcomes as we leverage our partners' core competencies. We' re very happy about the ones you named, and you should expect more partnership announcements over the next coming years that serve our ecosystem and improve the ecosystem for our riders, for eaters, and for many of our partners.
So the next question is from Lars Derhagen. "Unemployment in the United States has generally been low during the history of Uber, except during COVID-19. To better understand how economic recessions impact the earner supply, can management provide insight on how economic downturns affect earner signups and engagement on the Uber platform based on experiences from international markets?
Yeah, Lars, you're correct that in the US, we haven't operated through, call it, a more traditional economic downturn. We have seen from our international operations that driver and earning supply on our platform tends to significantly improve during those downturns. We've seen this particularly in certain LatAm markets that have experienced more economic volatility. This has resulted in a more countercyclical dynamic in our marketplace as we see the supply of earners increase during a weaker economy, which helps bring down surge, bring down prices, and improves ETA and reliability. This creates a better experience for consumers, which helps stimulate demand.
This gives us a good amount of confidence that with this dynamic, alongside the investments that we're making in affordability and low-cost products, membership, merchant selection, we can perform well through a range of economic backdrops.
Again, we haven't seen a downturn in the U.S., but we don't think that kind of the economics are going to change and that we do tend to be somewhat, call it cycle-resistant, if you want to call it that, particularly as it relates to the supply on the platform.
Our next question comes from Stephen Aduba. "Explain if there are any adverse repercussions of President Trump's tariff strategy or immigration policies and practices that could adversely impact Uber's operations and/or results.
Yeah, I think on tariffs first, we don't have direct exposure from tariffs, you know. If you think about Uber, we're the ultimate local business. The money that a rider pays in a city actually stays in the city usually. There's a driver in the city who's driving the car. The money both in mobility and in delivery tends to be very, very local, which protects us from having direct exposure as it relates to tariffs. Now, what effect on tariffs? What effect are tariffs going to have on the economy? We just talked about how we tend to be pretty cyclically resistant.
There is a possibility that tariffs increase the cost of cars for drivers, but obviously, drivers can buy local, and they can also access autos through the used cars or used vehicles as well. Again, we don't think on tariffs we have any direct exposure. We'll see.
We are kind of engaged like everyone on trying to figure out what this new environment is going to bring. On the immigration policy in the U.S., I'd emphasize that we built industry-leading processes and technology to verify the identities of drivers and couriers. They have to pass a multi-step safety screening process before they work on the platform, and we continue comprehensive background checks for all of our drivers and couriers.
Thanks for the question, Stephen. The next one comes, another one from Sean Ridley. "Uber has made impressive progress towards GAAP profitability and strong free cash flow. As shareholders, how should we think about capital allocation over the next 12 to 24 months?
Yeah, Sean, good question. I think you should view our top priority as investing in growth to support our core businesses. Really, we're looking for capital-efficient opportunities to further generate durable free cash flow and free cash flow per share growth. We also want to make sure that we've got plenty of liquidity consistent with our investment-grade rating to support expanding our marketplace on a global basis across the fronts in which we operate.
We will selectively evaluate acquisition opportunities that align with our strategy, but note that we will continue to hold a very high bar for any M&A opportunities as far as the target ROIs that we're looking for for our investments, whether cash or stock.
We will look to return excess capital to shareholders through stock repurchases, which we've seen over the past quarters of increasing buyback activity and the recently announced $1.5 billion ASR that I mentioned earlier.
Sticking with Sean, who asks, "Given Uber Eats' rapid expansion and increased contribution to Uber's overall revenue, what specific operational and strategic initiatives are being prioritized over the next 12 to 24 months to drive sustainable profitability, particularly in light of competitive pressure, delivery cost optimization, and potential regulatory changes in key markets?
Yeah, another question as well. You have heard me talk earlier about the great momentum that we have got in our delivery business. And really, we' ve been generating both industry-leading top-line and improving profitability as well. So t he team is executing very, very well. A couple of initiatives that I would call out here. One is advertising, which earlier in 2024 surpassed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate. It was a target that we set. We exceeded that target. It really has continued to grow very, very nicely. As you can imagine, the advertising business is a high-margin business.
So the growth there in advertising is very accretive as it relates to our margins, i t allows us to either take those profits at the bottom line or reinvest it in growth and w e' re doing both, actually.
And then we do, we continue, you know, every day, every week to work really, really hard at improving efficiencies across our delivery business, particularly as it relates to order fulfillment. And as we' re expanding in our grocery and retail business, our losses in that segment have continued to narrow. And in fact, in Q4, we reached break-even on a variable contribution basis on our grocery and retail business. So we think we' ve got a number of levers to continue to drive profitability in our delivery business.
And of course, these improvements help fund important investments that we are making to make the service more affordable for our users and more reliable to make sure that you get your food and/or groceries when and where you expect them.
Our last question, Dara, is also from Sean. "Which global markets represent Uber's next wave of profitable scale, and what frameworks guide discussion or, I'm sorry, what frameworks guide decisions to double down, consolidate, or exit underperforming regions?
Yeah, so we're very excited about our growth opportunities in international markets. We have a footprint unlike anyone else. Our international portfolio is over half of our total gross bookings, I think somewhat underappreciated by investors, many of whom live in the US. So just using mobility as an example, we're able to drive growth in the international markets where we're finding new ways to grow supply. At the same time, we're deepening our product selection and tailoring new products to those regions. G reat example of that is our investments in taxi supply in Japan to build liquidity in that market.
Then Moto, which is a two-wheeler product that we have expanded in several markets, including Brazil as well. Just stepping back, bigger picture, the investment framework that we look at in terms of geographical expansion is based on optimizing for both growth and profitability.
One of the exciting things about Uber is that we got so many areas to lean in to drive growth and expansion, and that includes new markets. We look at new market expansion really through the lens of the best returns on our capital. Because we have teams on the ground in many, many regions, we have the expertise to launch and scale in new regions effectively and efficiently. That has helped us to grow and operate in over 70 countries worldwide.
Great. With that, we'll turn it back to Ron.
Thank you, Tony. On behalf of your board of directors, let me take this opportunity to express our appreciation to all stockholders who joined us today. Thank you for your support of Uber. Have a great day.
This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.
The host has ended this call. Goodbye.