New PostUber profitable (Zomato too), M&As in micromobility, Deliveroo & Gojek partner and mail-by-drone in the UK

#movingpeople deep-diving into Uber’s first-ever quarterly profit. Also Zomato had its first-ever quarterly profit, albeit a less impressive one, with profit margin of only 0.0008% of revenue. Unless you ask the stock market, which sent Zomato’s stock up - and Uber’s down.

T3 raises $140M; Indrive to Mexico City and Malaysia but with 10% less staff; Bolt’s quadricycle; Tier & Voi to merge?; micromobility.com to acquire VanMoof?; Deliveroo and Gojek partner; Grab offers dine-in; drone mail delivery by Skyports; Waymo in Austin; EU and Spain cat & mouse over ride-hailing regulation and more with Cabify, Voltio, Forth Mobility, Neuron Mobility, Paack, Elmo, May Mobility, Vertical Aerospace, Aska, Alef, Ohi and (short must read) bloated cars

Uber is profitable 🚗💰

For the 1st time ever, signalling the new era in mobility.

Uber reports its first quarterly operating profit in Q2/23. Highlights:

• Gross bookings up 16% YoY, 25 million per day bookings. Mobility grew 25%, delivery 12% and freight dropped (!) by 30% YoY. Good except freight.

• Revenue $9.23bn, up 14% YoY. Mobility brought in 52% of that, delivery 33% with freight and others bringing in the rest. Uber is still more of a ride-hailing company than it is a delivery company.

• Net income $394M. That includes $386M net benefit from revaluations of Uber’s equity investments.

• The company’s operating loss, since starting reporting in 2014, is $31.5 billion. Ouch.

• Free cash flow of $1.14 billion.

• Revenue run-rate from ads >$650M. A new revenue stream coming into life.

• Uber takes home 29.3% of ride-hailing and 19.6% of delivery commission.

How did the markets react? Dropped the stock, by ±7.7%, from Tuesday morning to close of trade Friday. Why? First, because Uber missed earning by $100M. Second, because analysts are worried about an upcoming price war initiated by Lyft.

For more on Uber: CNBC. TechCrunch. Reuters. Wired interview with Uber’s CEO. The Street. And the 15 page document that is Uber’s earning press release.

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT 🚙🚐

T3 raises $140M in an extended series A round. T3 is the 2nd largest ride-hailing company in China (after Didi), one of 318 ride-hailing apps in China. The company is present in 120 cities and serves 3 million rides a day.

Bolt South Africa launches a new ride category, Bajaj Qute. The vehicle isn’t legally a car, but a quadricycle, with top speed of 70 k/ph. This category allows for cheaper, shorter trips.

InDrive plans expansion into Malaysia, obtains regulatory approval to operate in Mexico City - and lays off 10% of staff, affecting >300 people.

Cabify in 2022 - gross revenue grew 32% YoY to €626M and gross profit was €72M (again, 32% YoY). 91 million bookings were taken on the platform which has “reached breakeven levels”.

Uber is buying 100 Teslas to deploy in Tokyo, making it available via its ‘Uber Premium’ service.

Sharing/renting 🚗🛴

Voltio expands its car sharing service to Madrid airport.

Forth Mobility, non-profit community carsharing in the US, expanding to two more cities in Washington.

Micromobility 🚲🛴

A micromobility market overlap map by Friedel. Keep handy for whenever there are rumours about mergers, such as the one about Tier and Voi possible merger. To a Friedel analysis on the rumoured deal.

Micromobility.com bids to acquire VanMoof. It makes sense from a strategic point-of-view, but can the company pull it off, seeing it faces its own financial troubles? Meanwhile, VanMoof files for insolvency in the UK.

Neuron Mobility conducted a global study looking at the micromobility gender gap. Analysing 10,000 rides, the company found the gap to narrow, 60%-40% in favour of men usage.

Delivery 🍽🧺

Zomato reports first-ever quarterly profit. ₹2 crore, or roughly $241K. The company saw its share jump from circa ₹85 to a high of ₹101.6, now (Monday, 7th) trading at around ₹97, roughly 15% stock price increase. A more critical view of this achievement lets us know that the 0.0008% profit (!) was gained by deferring tax and that Blinkit, the rapid-delivery business the company acquired, is still in the red.

Also Zomato starts ₹2 per-order platform fee pilot, following a similar step by Swiggy implemented four months ago. The fee represents 0.5% of the average order value, which is around ₹415.

Deliveroo and Gojek partner in Singapore, with Gojek customers enjoying discounts with Deliveroo and vice versa. This move is designed to enable a better value proposition versus Grab.

Grab follows Foodpanda to offer a dine-in solution. Grab is testing its new feature across 15 cities in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, allowing customers to pre-purchase dine-in vouchers at a discount. Foodpanda’s dine-in solution has been around since 2021, and is now available in Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

DoorDash Q2 sees $2.13bn in revenue, higher than consensus estimate, also seeing total order rise by 25% YoY to 532 million. Net losses narrowed to $172M from $263M a year earlier.

Paack, Spanish delivery startup, raises €40M, bringing the total to ±$350M. This equity & debt round will be used to bring the company to profitability.

Skyports launches UK’s first drone mail delivery pilot in partnership with the Royal Mail. The drone is developed by Brazilian Speedbird Aero.

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

Waymo coming to Austin to launch a robotaxi service. This will be the company's 4th market - following Phoenix, SF and LA. The company has not elaborated on exact dates or number of vehicles to be deployed. It will join Cruise, already active in the city.

Cruise now has about 400 driverless vehicles on the road. Cruise operating cost-per-mile improving. Cruise says it's reached the robotaxi industry's first union agreements. Deals have been signed with an electrical workers union and a service employees (janitors) union.

Elmo’ s tele-driven cars started operating in the streets of Helsinki, expanding from home country Estonia. May Mobility to launch self-driving shuttles for elderly & disabled in Detroit, starting in the fall of 2024. Funding has now been approved. .

Toyota and Pony.ai plan to mass produce robotaxis in China. Yandex’s self-driving group rebrands its international division as Avride.

Flying cars 🚁

Vertical Aerospace announced H1/23 results. Highlights: VX4 aircraft successfully completed its first untethered flights; moving forward in Brazil and Japan; cash and cash equivalents of £89.7m (true to end of H1), on track with plans. The company expects to raise this year.

Aska completes first test flight of Its ‘Street Legal eVTOL’. This is a vehicle that can fly AND drive on-road, a true ‘flying-car’, it won’t be with us before 2026. Alef, another flying car, sees $750M in pre-orders. OHI launches helicopter service for Brazil's richest, eyes 'flying cars'.

Gig economy 💰

EU launches probe into Spanish ride-hailing restrictions. Last month the Spanish government set new transport regulations, classifying the conventional taxi industry as a “public interest service”, leaving out ride-hailing services. The Spanish government already tried limiting the number of ride-hailing services in a different way, which was ruled out by an EU court on grounds of fair competition. Now it's round 2.

In Barcelona, a local taxi union was fined €123K for coercing taxi drivers to refrain from using ride-hailing platforms.

A story about Massachusetts’ upcoming balot and how gig-economy companies fuel ‘grass-root’ worker groups. In 2024 voters will need to decide on the fate of gig-economy in the state.

In other news 📰

Why ‘bloated’ cars, or too-big SUVs, are terrible for society - for road safety, for the planet, for equity, and for road maintenance. Good short read.

BYD leads over Tesla in EV car sales, selling nearly 1.9 million models compared to Tesla’s 1.3 million.