Uber stock drops as bookings guidance disappoints; CEO bets on robotaxi push to grow overall business

Uber stock dropped on the print despite the company reporting FY revenue of $52.0B, up 18.3% year-over-year, with net margins around 19.3% and diluted EPS of $4.73. The selloff was driven not by the trailing numbers but by forward bookings guidance that came in softer than the Street wanted, raising questions about whether Uber's core ride-hailing and delivery growth is starting to decelerate off a large base.

In response, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is pointing investors toward the company's robotaxi push as the next leg of growth, framing autonomous vehicle partnerships as a way to expand the addressable market and offset any softening in traditional bookings growth. This matters because Uber's valuation has increasingly priced in a story that blends steady core-platform cash generation with optionality on autonomy, and any wobble in bookings guidance tests how much patience the market has for that longer-dated thesis.

The tension here is straightforward: bulls can point to still-double-digit revenue growth (+18.3% YoY) and solid net margins (19.3%) as evidence the core business remains healthy even if bookings guidance missed, while bears will flag that a guidance miss on bookings — the forward-looking metric investors watch most closely — is exactly the kind of signal that precedes multiple compression in a stock that trades on growth durability.

What to watch next is whether management's robotaxi commentary translates into concrete partnership announcements or monetization timelines in coming quarters, and whether subsequent bookings prints stabilize or continue to decelerate. The stock's near-term path likely hinges on whether the market treats this guidance softness as a one-off comp issue or the start of a trend.