Not too long ago, there was a time when no one could agree on what Uber truly was. A transportation company posing as a software company? A software firm posing as a shipping company? A consumer brand stuck in a balance sheet that doesn’t seem to be able to produce actual free cash flow? UBER traded like a stock that analysts admired rather than trusted for the majority of the years following its initial public offering.
That is no longer the case. Uber has quietly evolved into what Dara Khosrowshahi has been promising it would become for the past seven years, albeit with less fanfare than the company’s previous narratives. A machine for making money. In an article that was released this morning, Seeking Alpha used those exact words.
The news that Uber had agreed to purchase an additional 4.5% stake in Delivery Hero from Prosus for approximately €270 million, or roughly $318 million, on Friday, April 17, was the most obvious signal. With the acquisition, Uber now holds the fourth-largest stake in the Berlin-based food delivery company, increasing its overall stake to roughly 7% and, according to Reuters’ calculations, more than $600 million.
The news caused Delivery Hero’s stock to rise 8.5%. Uber modestly ticked up. Not very dramatic. Uber is still expanding, acquiring, and treating Europe’s fragmented delivery market as a place where it wants to own a bigger piece of the board, but the underlying message was clear to anyone listening.
This has an intriguing twist. For strategic reasons, Prosus did not sell this stake to Uber. The European Commission mandated that it sell. The Commission made Delivery Hero’s stake reduction a requirement of approval when Prosus paid €4.1 billion to acquire Just Eat Takeaway last year. Prosus’s actions were deemed “baffling” by Jefferies analysts due to the low strike price and the absence of immediate selling pressure, particularly in light of the EU’s alleged consideration of looser merger rules.
For whatever reason, Uber bought the shares for €20 apiece, which is 22% more than the one-month average but less than Thursday’s close. To put it simply, it was an opportunistic purchase. Jefferies advised against interpreting it as a sign of a complete takeover of Delivery Hero. The two businesses have a substantial market overlap in Europe. Regulators would want to know. Uber, however, now occupies a different seat at the table than it did previously.
But this particular transaction isn’t what the stock market is actually reacting to. There is a pattern. Uber’s revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $14.37 billion, up 20.13% from the previous year. Quarter after quarter, margins have increased. Instead of burning money to gain market share, the company is now making money and reinvesting it. Value-oriented fund managers are taken aback by the P/E ratio, which stands at 16.13. The quote screen shows a tech-adjacent platform business that shouldn’t be there anymore, compounding at 20% with a PE in the mid-teens.
Things get speculative and, for some investors, genuinely thrilling in the robotaxi story. Uber’s collaboration with Lucid to deploy up to 35,000 autonomous vehicles has been the focus of constant social media discussion, and the stock has risen more than 6% in the last week, mostly due to sentiment surrounding the autonomous fleet.
Uber’s platform strategy, which integrates robotaxis from Waymo, Lucid, and others rather than creating its own, puts it in a position to succeed regardless of which autonomous technology ultimately takes the lead, according to Quiver Quantitative’s dashboard, which noticed the surge. In its purest form, that is the bull case. The robot car doesn’t need to be built by Uber. The network that the robot cars connect to is all that is required. If it succeeds, it’s a more profitable venture with a lower capital expenditure than Waymo’s.
But the bear case is still there. The fact that the stock is down from its 52-week high of $101.99 serves as a reminder that earlier this year, the market priced in something that was almost perfect before changing its mind.
According to the most recent data, Uber’s Q4 missed on revenue and EPS by almost 10%. Over the last six months, insider trading has tended toward selling; SVP Nikki Krishnamurthy sold 30,000 shares for about $2.2 million, and other executives have followed suit. DoorDash, which paid £2.9 billion to acquire Britain’s Deliveroo last year and is rapidly growing its own autonomous aspirations, is another source of competitive pressure. The food delivery industry is not a vast expanse. With a few well-funded armies, it is more akin to a disputed landmass.
Analysts who have been following Uber since the IPO feel that the company’s assessment has changed. In the past, the question was whether it would ever be profitable. The question of whether the losses were decreasing was the focus of the middle years. In 2026, the topic of discussion has shifted to whether Uber is affordable considering its revenue. According to CNN’s consensus, 86% of the 58 analysts who cover the stock recommend a buy. Just 2% say “sell.” The 12-month price target is approximately 40% higher than the current level, at $106. Wall Street hasn’t given up on that stock pattern. Wall Street has quietly come to trust this stock pattern.
It’s difficult to ignore how different this time feels from the Travis Kalanick era. Khosrowshahi took over a company with a nearly legendary culture issue and a business model that had not yet demonstrated its viability on a large scale. In markets where the competition is spending more money with less to show for it, he is now managing an organization that appears structurally profitable, strategically patient, and increasingly acquisitive.
The execution in Europe, the speed at which the autonomous vehicle rollout occurs, and whether the Delivery Hero stake proves to be a wise hedge or a distraction will determine whether the stock continues to rise from this point. As of yet, no one has the answers to those questions. The fact that Uber is a different company in 2026 than it was in 2019 is more evident, and the stock price, at $76 and change, is beginning to reflect this in a way that feels, for once, earned.
