Uber Technologies, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2021 Uber 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 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Balaji Krishnamurthy, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Thank you for joining us today, and welcome to Uber's first quarter 2021 earnings presentation. For the first time since the pandemic began, we are pleased to be broadcasting to you live from Uber's office in San Francisco. On the call today, we have Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, CFO Nelson Che and Chief Legal Officer Tony West. During today's call, we will present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Additional disclosures regarding these non-GAAP measures, including a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, are included in the press release, supplemental slides, and in our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted to investor.uber.com. As a reminder, 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, and 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 risks and uncertainties described in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K for the quarter ended December 31, 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 first quarter growth rates reflect year-over-year growth and are on a constant currency basis unless otherwise noted. For April trends, we will be providing comparisons with April 2019 in addition to year-over-year trends. Lastly, we have included a detailed Q1 financial review in our earnings press release, and Nelson will not go over those details again. With that, let me hand it over to Dara.

Thanks Balaji and thanks everyone for joining us today. We're finally seeing the light of end of the tunnel. As vaccination rates arise and infections fall and restrictions lift, people quickly breathe a sigh of relief and start moving again. There's pent up demand to see family and friends. Offices, restaurants and bars are reopening and even airports are seeing improved traffic. But it's important to recognize that the battle is certainly not over. Cases remain far too high in many places around the world. with many tragic consequences. We will continue to do our part on the ground to help beat this virus wherever we can. The actions we took last year and our team's hard work since then have uniquely positioned us to harness the recovery. Uber has already begun to fire on all cylinders. On a consolidated basis, we've returned to growth with Q1 our best quarter ever, April our best month ever, and last week our best week ever in terms of growth bookings. Even as we invested for growth, the benefits of scale and rigorous cost management drove and adjusted EBITDA improvement of $253 million year-on-year and $95 million quarter-on-quarter. We continue to have a strong balance sheet with significant liquidity and valuable and growing investments in several leading global mobility, delivery, and autonomous assets. Looking ahead, I'm confident that Uber will benefit from the complementary nature of our two large core opportunities. to help people go wherever they want, and to get whatever they need. Just last week, we announced several new products focused on the recovery. You can now book a vaccine appointment at Walgreens and your ride there, all in the Uber app. We're also expanding our reserve product to UberX and to airports, and our Uber Rent product is bringing the magic of Uber to car rentals. You can now rent a car from providers like Avis and Hertz right in your Uber app, And with our new valet feature, someone will drop the car off at your house and pick it up whenever you want. We've also added new benefits to each pass, new rides benefits to each pass, further differentiating it from the competition. I'll dive into each of our segments now, starting with mobility. Mobility recovery started to pick up pace in March and improved further in April, with strong vaccination rates in several key markets, including the U.S., were optimistic that this trend should accelerate going forward. In April, mobility GBs were $31 billion annualized run rate, up roughly 280% year-on-year, and 68% recovered versus April of 2019. U.S. regional trends continue to improve on most markets, with Miami now back to growth versus 2019, while New York City, New Jersey, Austin, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta were all up 70% to 80% recovered versus 2019 GB levels. Overall, U.S. gross bookings improved 5% month-on-month in April and were 62% recovered versus April of 2019. Outside the US, we see significant improvement in several markets in APAC, including Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which were all positive versus April 2019. In EMEA, we saw early signs of improvement after prolonged lockdowns in Q4 and Q1, with EMEA gross bookings up 10% month-on-month in April. In particular, the UK started reopening in April, with our business seeing a strong recovery almost instantly. improving nearly 60% week-on-week in the first week of reopening. UKGBs are now over 80% recovered versus 2019. In contrast, the extremely elevated case counts and renewed lockdowns in India adversely impacted mobility trends there. As riders come back to the platform, we're working hard to make sure that their second first trip is as magical as ever. One of our top priorities is to rebuild the driver base. Our research shows that drivers who left the platform last year primarily did so for two reasons, concerns about safety and concerns about there being enough rider demand. On the safety front, we're working hard to improve vaccine access for drivers, and we've continued to enforce our mask policies and provide free PPE and other supplies that keep both drivers and riders safe. With demand currently outstripping supply, driver earnings are at historically elevated levels. Median earnings for all online time before tips are around $37 an hour in New York City and Philadelphia, $36 an hour in Chicago, and $33 an hour in Austin, just to name a few cities. We know that drivers often work simultaneously on other apps, so their total earnings are likely even higher. In other words, looking at the more appropriate measure of active time on Uber, median earnings are at or above $40 an hour in several U.S. cities. And several countries, including the U.S., will continue to lean in with targeted incentives for new and existing drivers to build up significant supply, which will enable us to achieve maximum velocity as the recovery plays out. Now, turning to delivery, which continues to surpass our growth expectations. Q1 growth bookings growth accelerated to roughly 160% year-on-year and reached a $52 billion annualized run rate in April. We improved our category position in several major markets, including the UK, Canada, France, Spain, South Africa, and Taiwan. In the U.S., our category position was stable, with some improvement in urban markets in recent weeks. Notably, we continue to strengthen our category position in New York City and suburbs, driven by improving restaurant selection. We continue to broaden our delivery offerings beyond food as consumers become habituated to having anything delivered to their door. Our new verticals business expanded substantially during the quarter, with an annualized GB run rate nearly doubling from Q4 and reaching $3 billion in March. We're seeing improving traction in many markets, including France, UK, the US, Canada, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. We signed several key partnerships over the past few months, including Rite Aid in the U.S., Rexel in Canada, and Group Casino in France, amongst many others. We also announced an exclusive partnership with GoPuff that will expand our selection of convenience and everyday essential items directly from the ETAP. To capitalize on these tailwinds, we remain in a period of elevated investment for the delivery business, including leading into courier growth to serve robust demand. Additionally, our profitable markets, which generated over $135 million of EBITDA on just over $3 billion of gross bookings, give us additional flexibility to reinvest in growth markets. As a result, we remain on track to reaching EBITDA break-even for delivery by year-end. Finally, turn to freight. With a renewed focus on the freight opportunity in the U.S., our team reached an important milestone during the quarter. with the business registering its first positive variable contribution quarter while delivering revenue growth acceleration to 51%, as well as EBITDA margin of 23 percentage points year on year. Scale and automation has allowed us to achieve what we believe is industry-leading variable cost per load. Our ML and data capabilities have allowed us to tighten pricing and margins on a target route level. And we have diversified our product offerings to new channels, such as APIs, direct directly providing shippers real-time pricing, and our market access product that helps customers quickly and easily source unplanned capacity from the largest digital carrier network, all with one tap. We're confident about Uber Freight's product market fit and a very large TAM opportunity. As the business continues to scale, we now have a clear line of sight to EBITDA profitability as well. To sum up, I'm as excited as ever about the opportunity ahead for Uber. Our delivery business continues to grow faster than anyone could have predicted. Our mobility business is bouncing back in many markets around the world, and freight is gaining share while improving margins. And because of the actions we took this past year, we're returning to growth an even stronger, more focused, and ultimately more profitable foundation. Now over to Nelson for some details and the financial outlook.