Dray
Finance Student, Stock Investor, Technology & Business
Uber's rising free cash flow makes the weak share price and sentiment look disconnected from its business. The attached chart shows trailing free cash flow climbing toward $10 billion, while revenue grew 12.2% and active consumers 15.6% year over year despite a 26% share-price decline over the past year. x.com x.comÂ
Uber's rising operating margins make the market's apparent dismissal of it look misplaced. Its trailing operating margin climbed from -13% in March 2022 to 12% in June 2026, continuing the earlier case that improving profitability is underappreciated. x.comÂ
Uber is well on its way to becoming a compounding machine: revenue and free-cash-flow growth have been strong and consistent, while its moat widens through network effects and its flywheel ecosystem. At 23x forward earnings it looks like a very interesting opportunity, and the bear narratives are often overblown. x.comÂ
Uber's valuation is out of balance with its fundamental trajectory over the medium term, and the long-term thesis is less convincing than it once was. It became a cash-flow machine sooner than expected, but the past couple of years have been a grind. It is a hold now and a sell if it reaches the top of its technical channel around $100. x.com x.comÂ
Uber looks cheap at a 7% free-cash-flow yield while growing non-GAAP EPS 25-30% a year. Waymo would need to hurry its autonomous fleet rollout worldwide to catch up. x.comÂ
Uber is one of the most interesting opportunities in the market, down 31% from its highs while printing more cash. The market treats it as a low-margin business that autonomous driving could disrupt, missing its real moat: distribution. A network of consumers, drivers and merchants is very hard to replicate and lets it add verticals without paying acquisition costs again. Uber also owns about 13% of Grab, down 85% and building financial services on the same model. x.comÂ
Uber cannot be owned until its robotaxi strategy and economics are clearer, including whether it stays asset-light or pivots to asset-heavy. Calling it 10 times 2027 free cash flow may be unfair if an asset-heavy pivot sends that cash into capex. Google puts global ridesharing at $150-180 billion in gross bookings a year, reaching $200 billion by decade's end, likely not big enough for Waymo, Tesla and Uber to all win while each spends tens of billions on fleets. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Uber remains a long-term holding because it is still in a dominant position and generating healthy free cash flow. A stock that has not rallied yet is not a loser on that basis alone. x.comÂ
Uber's large, successful network and marketplace give it a moat. The stock is in stage 4, but its fundamentals still appeal. x.comÂ
Uber's high-margin advertising profit is at risk if bookings move to AI agents or other surfaces within three years. Roughly 18%+ of its ~$5B FY25 net income, excluding a $5B tax benefit, is estimated to come from advertising, based on $1.75B of ad revenue at an assumed 70% operating margin and 22% tax rate. Even sticky customers will have little reason to open the app and look at ads, so it is unclear how much ad revenue Uber can keep. x.comÂ
Cash generation and market values have diverged for these twelve beaten-down stocks. Over the long term, valuations tend to follow the cash businesses produce; the charts compare quarterly free cash flow with market capitalization for Uber, Netflix, Intuit, Adobe, PayPal, McDonald's, Snap, Duolingo, Chewy, Pinterest, Reddit and e.l.f. Beauty. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
