Uber revealed it lost $708 million over the past three months. That’s actually an improvement over last quarter, when the ride-hailing giant lost $991 million. Uber also said its first quarter revenue was 18 percent higher than it was in the last quarter of 2016, and that it is sitting on $7.2 billion, around the same amount it had last year.
That’s all good news for the ride-hailing company, considering the slew of controversies it’s defended itself against in the last few months.
“These results demonstrate that our business remains healthy and resilient as we focus on improving our culture, management, and relationship with drivers,” Uber said in statement to the New York Times. “The narrowing of our losses in the first quarter puts us on good trajectory towards profitability.”
Uber remains a private company, but decided to start sharing selective financial earnings earlier this year. The company still does not provide information on its overall ride-hailing userbase growth, and excludes a number of other costs and expenses, but investors believe this transparency into the company’s business is a precursor to an IPO filing.
If Uber goes public, it will do it without its head of finance, Gautam Gupta, who announced Wednesday he would leave the company in July to be the COO of a startup. A spokesperson at Uber told Business Insider the company will begin searching for a chief financial officer with more public company experience to kick off its campaign to go public. As Business Insider points out, Uber has been valued by private investors at as high as $69 billion.
Uber lost a number of executives in the last 24 to 48 hours, including Anthony Levandowski, its head of self-driving cars, who was fired because of his ongoing legal battle with Google, and Josh Mohrer, the company’s controversial New York manager.
The pioneer of ride-hailing is now tasked to find replacements for key positions while it deals with multiple scandals. Uber is said to have gotten its first look yesterday at a long-awaited report from former Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been conducting an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.
In October, Uber will go to court with Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving branch. The verdict will determine whether Uber can continue to develop self-driving cars, a technology CEO Travis Kalanick said was mandatory for the future of the company.
H/T New York Times