Uber + Lyft + Deliveroo profitable, Ola Electric successful IPO and Zeelo marks 10 million rides

#movingpeople is a part of Mobility Business  - a consultancy dedicated to "All Things Mobility".  

Ride-Hailing & Taxi, Buses & DRT  🚙🚐

Uber published its - profitable - Q2/24 reports. Highlights:

• Gross bookings grew 21% YoY to $40 billion; trips also grew by 21%

• Revenue up 16% YoY to $10.7 billion

• Adjusted EBITDA up 71% YoY to $1.57 billion

• Mobility leads: Mobility brought in 51.4% of gross bookings, 57.3% of revenue and contributed $1.567 billion to the Adj. EBITDA. Mobility margins grew from 29.3% to 29.8%

• Pay attention to delivery margins: Delivery brought in 45.3% of gross bookings, 30.7% of revenue and contributed $0.588 billion to Adj. EBITDA. Delivery margins decreased from 19.6% to %18.2 

• Freight brought $1.27 billion in revenue, 11.9% of total revenue, and had a minus $12M in Adj. EBITDA. Freight as a sector is experiencing challenges. 

For more: Quarterly report (10-Q). Current report (8-K). Supplemental Data presentation. If you have to choose one - start with the 8-K. 

Uber chose to highlight the autonomous front - highlighting its partnerships with Waymo, Waabi and Serve Robotics on ride-hailing, delivery and freight - putting the focus on its strengths in marketplace management and customer service. For Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO, it was also important enough to talk about Tesla’s shortcomings of its plan to allow vehicle owners to share their vehicles - touching on vehicle owner's (un)willingness to allow strangers to ride in their vehicles, the need for customer service and peak time availability concerns. Commentary: after winning ride-hailing, Uber needs to make sure it succeeds to protect its market share when autonomous vehicles arrive.

Uber wasn’t the only profitable US ride-hailing player this Q - Lyft achieved quarterly profitability for its first time ever! 🤑*BUT

• Net profit of $5M 

• Loss from Operations minus $27.2M

So how did Lyft go from -$27.2 to +$5M? “Net income included $89.9M of stock-based compensation and related payroll tax expenses”. 

• Gross booking $4 billion, 17% increase YoY

• Revenue of $1.4 billion, up 41% YoY

• Active Riders increased by 10% YoY to 23.7 million; rides rose 15% to 205 million

For more: Quarterly report (10-Q). Current report (8-K). Supplemental Data presentation. 

Lyft chose to focus on “Price Lock”, a new feature combating “Primetime” (what Lyft calls surge pricing). CEO Risher dislikes surge as he considers it a bad service to customers, and Lyft was able to minimise Primetime by 25% vs. Q1. Price Lock is a monthly subscription that caps the price for a specific route at a specific time. 

When it comes to the stock market, Uber and Lyft diverge. This is due to reaching analyst's expectation and Q3 outlook, which differed between the two companies. 

Everest, supplier of green cars to ride-hailing fleets, to receive $20M from the World Bank’s investment arm. The company operates 17,700 cars and will use the funds to expand its fleet and diversify into intercity and employee transportation. The company received $20M from Uber last year. Commentary: Uber is actively investing in green fleets (see also Blusmart) to ensure “green” supply.  

In Bay County, Florida, Spare and Uber are “transforming on-demand transportation”. Wait, you ask, what is this partnership? Uber is in the business of working with DRT (microtransit) providers, offering Uber cars when DRT does not make commercial sense or is unavailable. 

Zeelo celebrates “10M rides milestone. >3M of them came in the last 6 months”. Shout out to the guys at Zeelo for this amazing achievement!

Nemi expands in Italy with a new DRT service in Puglia. The town has 1.700 residents, and 1,400 trips have been booked since launch on July 1st. FlixBus enters Ireland. Spare created a new consulting unit. In Singapore, Ryde partners with Singlife on insurance. The Canary Islands are updating vehicle licensing regulation, putting in sustainability measures and giving control to local authorities, in a move that could potentially hurt Uber and Cabify. San Francisco is planning a ballot in November, aimed at increasing ride-hailing tax on Uber, Lyft and Waymo, to fund local public transport. 

Proximity is creating a real estate marketplace, which enables brands to connect to underutilised real estate. Due to affordability, the cost of finding sites and the time it can take to do so, Proximity is creating a platform which helps brands find new locations easily and efficiently. 

Proximity is working with brands in the last mile, e-mobility, car sharing, logistics, fleet storage, last mile retail and locker sector who are looking for either land or car parking real estate. With over 600+ locations already live on the marketplace, if you as a brand have real estate requirements, Proximity is a one-stop shop and can help support your growth strategy.

Get in touch.

Car Sharing/renting 🚗

GreenMoblity increases guidance for 2024: forecasts $17.5M to $19M revenue and expects net profit from continuing operations of anything from $150K to $1.7M. In H1/24 the Danish company completed exits from Finland, Holland, and Belgium to focus only on Denmark and had a net profit from continuing operations of minus $150K. 

Zoomcar launches first fulfilment centre, the first of over 100 fulfilment centres planned by the end of 2024. These centres manage operations (cleaning, parking, delivery etc.) for hosts not wanting to take operations on themselves, and are run by Zoomcar’s partners. Also Zoomcar unifies guest and host apps, which were separated up to now. 

Splendgets AUS$20M from the Australian government to grow EV fleet. FlexClubintroduces pay-as-you-go car rental in SA. Zipcar to leave Oxford, due to high costs. The company is also pulling out of Cambridge and Bristol, to focus on London.

Micromobility 🚲🛴

North America (US, Canada, Mexico) 2023 micromobility (scooters, bikes) report. Key takeaways: 

• 412 cities have a micromobility service; of those 115 cities have both scooter and bike services

• Number of trips grew to 172 million vs.157 million in 2022; vehicles decreased by 9,000 to 280,000. 

• Average trip duration is 15 minutes; avg. distance is 1.5 miles (2.4 km)

• Typical user: white young male with either very low or very high income

Lime won‘t expand to Ireland because of the 25kg limit regulation in the country. Bolt and Tier expect to enter in the future, joining local company Zeus who developed a compliant model. 

Nextbike announces H1/24 25% ride  growth YoY. In H1/24 the company had 24 million rides, and has launched in Spain, Slovakia and Poland.

Delivery 🍽🧺

Deliveroo published its H1/24 report - key takeaways (all YoY unless mentioned otherwise):

• GTV up 5% to £3.69 billion, revenue up 1% to £1.03 billion; 

• Gross profit £382.5; gross profit is 37.2% of revenue and is 10.4% of GTV

• Adjusted EBITDA up 57% to £62M

• £1.3M in profit

• Grocery is 14% of Deliveroo’s GTV, and 70% of customers have yet to order groceries through the platform, indicating room for growth 

Zomato Q1/25 report (for August 1, 2024) - key takeaways: 

• Adjusted revenue $538.5M (INR 4,520 crore), up 62% YoY

• Adjusted EBITDA $35.6M - INR 299 crore, from INR 12 crore YoY

• GOV Growth in all segments - food delivery GOV grew 27% YoY; Q-commerce 130%; going-out 106%; Hyperpure (B2B) grew 96%

• Contribution margin reduced from 7.5% to 7.3% QoQ

For more about the business in this excellent Q&A section. 

Zomato now enables cash payments for orders, with the change instantly adding to their Zomato Money account. Zomato hires product managers from its delivery partners. Rapido goes past the $1 billion GMV mark. 

Rest of World global food delivery quiz. I got 5/9.

Autonomous & remote-driving 🤖℡

People don’t like people, and that is a heck of a business model. 

Mercedes-Benz has received approval from Beijing to conduct level-4 autonomous driving tests, the first international carmaker to obtain such a permit in China’s capital city. 

Tasaru Mobility Investments, a Saudi investment firm, completed its investment in Benteler subsidiary Holon. 

Detroit to launch a free autonomous shuttle service, with Perrone Robotics and Liftango. The service will start manually (real people driving) and is expected to turn autonomous toward the end of year. Haneda airport, Tokyo, to introduce autonomous shuttles, by Boldly, launch expected in 2026. 

Waymo expands service in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Beep expands self-driving shuttle in California. JB Hunt and Kodiak partnership expands weekly deliveries. WeRide to launch Its new generation of robotaxi on October 15th. 

Co-Founder./CEO Ali from Rollee interviewed with “The Curbivore”. Read about how Rollee helps better underwrite gig economy workers, allowing lenders more knowledge and less risk. 

Get in touch. 

Flying cars 🚁

Archer to set up an air taxi network in LA by 2026 (ahead of the World Cup). The company announced a number of vertiport locations to answer mobility needs in congestion-ridden LA. The company aims for limited commercial pilots in six US cities in 2025. 

Also, Stellantis to provide Archer with funding of up to $370M, funds to be used to ramp up vehicle production. For more on Archer, read Q2/24 Shareholders Letter. 

Joby applies for certification in Australia. Joby completes production of 3rd vehicle. For more on Joby, read Q2/24 Shareholders Letter. 

Volocopter wasn’t able to fly in the Olympics, due to motor certification issues. . 

CATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer, invests in Shanghai-based eVTOL company Autoflight. 

Opinion: eVtol companies advertise of ground vs airtime are misleading at best. The guy has a point. TBD.

OEMs 🛺⚡️

Ola Electric had a good IPO and raised $734M in a fully subscribed IPO, seeing its shares rising 44% over IPO price. The company, which manufactures electric scooters (mopeds), commands 39% of the market and is also going into the motorcycle segment. It is yet to be profitable. 

Rivian publishes Q2/24 report and it is better than expected. The company is still very much in the red, net loss in Q2 was $1.46 billion, and is on track for a positive gross profit during the fourth quarter. Lucid publishes Q2/24 report shows a net loss of $643.4M. Both are still burning a lot of cash, but thankfully, they have rich backers

Gig economy 💰

Uber and Lyft compromise with NYC to scale black driver lockouts. Ride-hailing companies started to lock out drivers in between jobs because of NYC’s new minimum wage regulation, and after the city threatened to put in more regulation in place to stop the lockout, reached an agreement, which is still dependent on Lyft’s ability to increase drivers’ busy time. Union is unhappy. To be continued on Labour Day, when new data comes in. 

How Tim Walz, now the Vice-President nominee for the Democratic Party, handled the Minnesota ride-hailing legislation.

In other news 📰

Cost of US nationwide average annual cost of full-coverage reached an average of $2,329 in June, up from $1,601 in January 2023. That’s a 45% increase. 

Eleport, an EV charging Baltics and East European player, acquires TurboVolt, expanding into Croatia and Slovenia. Chaiz, car warranty marketplace, raises $3.7M. A UK train driver explains why people aren’t going into the profession. 

I love meeting new people, learning about mobility innovation and exchanging opinions. Interested in discussing mobility?

People 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

August Grønli is the new Head of Carshare Norway & Spain @ Getaround.

Elena Williams is the new Director, Government and Global Engagement @ Connected Places Catapult. 

Matthias Weber is the new Sales Team Leader and Interim Marketing Team Leader @ Cambio CarSharing Deutschland.

Marc Amblard is the new Advisory Board Member @ CarStudio at Mobivia. 

Congrats and good luck!

Tom Cooper is the new Regional General Manager ANZ & US @ Beam Mobility.

Congrats and good luck!

Thank you for reading #movingpeople. If you like what you're reading, please share it with your friends and colleagues so they can benefit from it too.