Uber shares trade 20% below the record high they set in October 2025, even as the S&P 500 has climbed 14% over the same stretch. Investors are pricing in long-term risk from autonomous vehicles, but Uber's second-quarter numbers show gross bookings, revenue, and margins all moving higher.
Shares of Uber have fallen 20% since the stock's all-time high in October 2025, a peak that capped a 237% run over the prior three years. The decline stands out because it hasn't tracked the broader market: the S&P 500 has climbed 14% since Uber's peak.
Autonomous vehicles are the biggest worry
The gap points to a specific concern: the long-term threat that self-driving technology poses to Uber's ride-hailing model. Alphabet's Waymo was completing 500,000 paid weekly rides across 10 U.S. cities as of March, and industry experts see it as the leader in the race. Tesla's robotaxi service, meanwhile, operates in six U.S. cities and had logged 380,000 cumulative unsupervised miles as of early August. If either platform scales into cheap, safe, widely adopted self-driving rides, it could undermine Uber's business model.
Uber says AV rides remain a rounding error
Uber isn't standing still. The company plans to facilitate autonomous rides in 15 cities by the end of 2026 and has partnered with multiple AV companies while making equity investments in some of them. According to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, AV rides represent only 0.1% of the global ride-hailing market. Uber's 20 largest U.S. markets account for 30% of its domestic gross bookings, so even a rapid AV push in those markets would not fully disrupt a business spread across many regions.
Growth and margins keep expanding
Uber's underlying results haven't slowed. Second-quarter gross bookings jumped 24% year over year to $58 billion, driving revenue 12% higher. Monthly active users rose 16% year over year to 208 million. The operating margin reached 13.3% for the quarter.
The stock's EV-to-EBIT ratio sits at 23.3, near its cheapest level ever, a discount tied largely to AV risk. Uber's current market cap stands at $160 billion, and that valuation gap remains the central question for investors weighing the stock now.
Source: Fool
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