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Uber shares have rallied 60% to a record this year as partnerships with robotaxi startups like Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and growth in new markets have given bulls reasons to cheer after the stock underperformed in 2024. The advance has made Uber the seventh-best S&P 500 performer in 2025.
'They've done a great job expanding their addressable markets by adding things like grocery, convenience, alcohol,' said Jamie Meyers, senior equities analyst at Laffer Tengler Investments Inc.
Such moves, however, haven't fully assuaged concerns about long-term risks from robotaxi services like Waymo, which is operating independently in three cities — San Francisco, Phoenix and Los Angeles — and in partnership with Uber in Austin and Atlanta. Tesla Inc. is going it alone and began testing a similar offering in Austin last month.
Reports on Waymo and Tesla's robotaxi plans have triggered selloffs in shares of Uber and smaller rival Lyft Inc. in recent months.
'There's this view that's somewhat percolated across the investor base that regardless of what the competition looks like, they own the relationship with the consumer in terms of mobility,' said Matt Stucky, Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management's chief portfolio manager of equities. 'I would question that quite a bit just in terms of the path forward for the company.'
Uber didn't respond to a request for comment.
The San Francisco-based firm has for years been investing into new areas across its core ride-hailing and delivery businesses in the US and abroad, helping fuel revenue growth that's expected to be 15% in 2025. It has also entered into more than a dozen partnerships with car manufacturers and technology developers around the world.
David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, likes Uber's strategy of partnering with self-driving rivals and remains bullish, though he doesn't expect the stock to push much higher in the near term with few catalysts on the horizon.
'The market finally started to recognize that we'd rather take kind of this aggregator approach and reward that company,' he said.
Roughly three quarters of analysts tracked by Bloomberg that cover Uber have buy-equivalent ratings and the remainder are neutral. But the run-up in shares has the stock trading roughly in line with the average price target at about $98.
Canaccord analyst George Gianarikas acknowledges that Uber's strategy of embracing a variety of self-driving services may well prove to be successful, but sees the risks as too great to ignore.
'An alternative scenario is also plausible: a new world dominated by a few AV behemoths that control the value chain,' he wrote in a research note late last month. 'We remain flexible and are open to either outcome, but given the uncertainty and potential for rapid disruption, see neutral as the appropriate near-term rating.'
Tech Chart of the Day
Samsung Electronics Co.'s profit fell for the first time since 2023, reflecting the deepening market share losses clouding the memory chipmaker's prospects in the AI era. The company reported a sharper-than-anticipated 56% plummet in operating income for the June quarter, which it blamed on inventory writedowns following US curbs on Chinese-bound AI chips.
Top Tech News
Apple Inc.'s top executive in charge of artificial intelligence models is leaving for Meta Platforms Inc., in another setback in the iPhone maker's struggling AI efforts.
Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Day is slamming into President Donald Trump's trade war, with ever-shifting tariffs prompting some brands to sit out the summer sale and some shoppers dropping hints they plan to pull back.
Robinhood Markets Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said the firm is in talks with regulators over its offering of tokenized equities in Europe, after the launch drew rebuke from companies including OpenAI.
CoreWeave Inc. is dropping $9 billion on the data-center operator Core Scientific Inc. in an effort to gain more direct control over the physical assets powering the artificial-intelligence boom.
Epic Games Inc. settled its antitrust case against Samsung Electronics Co. that alleged the company was conspiring with Alphabet Inc.'s Google to block rival app marketplaces through default settings on mobile devices sold by the electronics giant.
Earnings Due Tuesday
Postmarket
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--With assistance from Natalie Lung and Yoolim Lee.
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