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Ryan Henderson
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Podcast Host (Intro)
Welcome to Chitchat Stocks. On this show, hosts Ryan Henderson and Brett Shafer analyze businesses and riff on the world of investing. As a quick reminder, Chitchat Stocks is a CCM Media Group podcast. Anything discussed on Chitchat Stocks by Ryan, Brett or any other podcast guest is not formal advice or recommendation. Now please enjoy this episode.
Brett Shafer
Welcome into Chit Chat Stocks, a podcast to help you find your next great investment. Today we bring back on newly recurring guest Arya Rodney, who has worked with Ryan at Fiscal AI is a young investor. I feel old finally being able to say that we have some people on that are finally younger than us with some great YouTube comments, content at his personal channel as well as Twitter talking stuff like I'm just scrolling through right now, Adobe ServiceNow, ASML Zeta, which is a company that we'd like to look at at some point. So a lot of stuff on timely, you know, stocks that are soaring, stocks that are falling. Lots of fundamental analysis. But today we are talking one of, I believe your largest positions, if not largest positions in your portfolio. It's turned into a bit of a battleground stock, Uber Technologies or just Uber. We plan to discuss the overall business, autonomous vehicles, opportunities and threats there, the delivery business, moonshots, overall industry tailwinds, geographical diversification, and his opinion on the stock. So Aria, that's a long intro. Welcome to the show. I'm going to kick things off with a question as we kind of go for a broad overview of the business. Uber is a well known brand. Many people have known them for over a decade now. But as we sit here in Q1 2026, what is driving this business today?
Arya Radnia
Yeah, I mean first of all, thank you guys for having me back on. I joked offline with Brett, that fastest reoccurring guest on on the podcast history. But yeah, in terms of what is driving the business today and maybe Ryan if you'd like to pull the chart up. But segment wise, if we're talking about it, I believe roughly 60% of the revenues of the business today do come from that mobility segment. About 35% of the revenues of the company come from the, you know, the, each segment or the delivery segments. And then you do have this bit of a freight segment roughly making up 5 to 10%, give or take. The core of the business kind of grows at north of 20%. So if you look at that headline, revenue number grows at about 18%. But between freight, excuse me, between delivery and the mobility side of the business, you know, revenues are growing north of 20%. Obviously you have this very nice sort of operating leverage that comes with the business. And yeah, that's kind of the gist of the business. There are 70 countries, 9 million drivers, 200 million monthly active users, and that's about it.
Brett Shafer
I'm, I'm not sure exactly how precise they narrow down the geographic diversification or what commentary you've heard on that, but take us through that. I know, you know, everyone's going to have the relationship to Uber in their own country, but it's different in different areas. So what is the geographic diversification from? Maybe just a riot. Overall standpoint versus dollar flows. Are we North American focused, Europe focused, or is it more widely dispersed than maybe some of our American listeners or North American listeners definitely understand it.
Arya Radnia
So just looking at fiscal AI here, almost exactly half the revenues of the company do come from North America. So U.S. and Canada, and then it's kind of about $15 billion in Europe, Middle east and Africa. So that represents, you know, roughly 30% of revenues. So 50% of revenues North America, 30% Europe. And then you're seeing sort of expansion in Latam and Asia as well.
Brett Shafer
What do you think the opportunity is? I mean, look, 50% of revenue is coming from either said, the United States or North America. But either way, that's a small percentage of the global population. Is part of the thesis that in these other countries there is much, much longer Runway to grow, especially if they can just ride the tailwind of economic expansion in some of these other markets, such as India, Latin America, what have you.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, absolutely. So I would say it's a bit of a misconception. I feel like at least in North America, we kind of view Uber as this like super mature business. You know, you might know a lot of people that use Uber and whatnot. I would still argue that we are still very much in the early innings of this company and its growth trajectory. There's a chart that they disclose on some of their different earnings materials and it kind of shows by country. It's a bit of a weird metric, but it's like what percentage of adults you use Uber once a Month. And so like their best market by far is actually Australia. Australia and then it's like Canada after that. And then actually the US is not one of the best markets. It's like a little bit further down the list. But basically the way the math works, it's like 1 in 10 adults or 1 in 5 adults uses Uber every single month. And so that leaves, you know, a huge amount of white space in terms of just even in their quote unquote mature markets such as in Australia, Canada, US to kind of drive incremental growth and incremental audience gains on that front. And then you also have the sort of natural tailwind of, you know, increased frequency. So even if in theory 100% of adults in say a Canada or in Australia are using Uber, which is not the case today, but even if we say it gets to like an Amazon level where like I believe 70, 80% of U.S. households have an Amazon prime subscription. Right. So even if we get to that like maturity state with Uber in particular, you can still drive frequency. So it's like, I'm sure, you know, even if 80% of US households are using Uber every single month, maybe they can use Uber twice per month or something like that.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Right.
Arya Radnia
And try to drive that frequency up. The average Uber user today transacts six times per month. Now the median is much lower, the median is two times per month. But still that leaves massive amount of white space even in the mature markets, never mind expansion into the European countries and whatnot. There's still massive GDP countries. I know, Germany in particular. That stat that I outlined of, of 1 in 10 adults using it per month in Germany it's 1 in 100. So they have 1% sort of share of, of you know, people using Uber in, in that region in specific. And they're making a push to kind of expand, expand their footprint within Germany specifically as of the past year or so. Right. So still lots of different countries and even in their mature countries there's a lot of white space to, to continue their growth.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Yeah, I think the, the global scale of Uber is something that often gets underappreciated by investors in general. Like definitely, especially in the context of like the self driving and Waymo risk and a lot of people that seems to be one of the biggest holdups. The we, we, we were just showing the chart. I mean EMEA so Europe, Middle East, Africa accounts for I think 33% of revenue and growing basically non US and Canada markets currently account for half the business and that is growing much quicker than the developed market. So it, I, I just think people maybe tend to overstate how much of Uber's rides are competing with self driving. But with that said, that is pretty much the, the biggest thesis breaker for a lot of people is where they stand on the self driving debate. So let's jump into that. I guess there's a lot of ways to go with this. What do you think, what do you make of the self driving threat slash opportunity? Are they beneficiary? Can they get hurt by it? Give us your takes.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, so I'll tell you what I personally have gathered and then we'll kind of dive a little bit deeper into it in my personal opinion, which of course is bias because I'm a pretty big shareholder and whatnot. But I believe that this is going to be a secular tailwind for the business and Uber will stand to benefit from the advent of autonomous vehicles. Now embedded in that, of course you have people that, on a surface level thinking, of course it makes the most amount of sense of. Right. So Tesla or Waymo or whatever, they're going to get rid of the driver and you know, surely it's not as big right now, but over time it's going to be a bigger sort of business for Waymo and whatnot. They're going to expand to all these different cities and why would they even pay Uber a 20% take rate? And it's, it's just innovators dilemma that Uber, who does not have self driving technology, you can offer a cheaper ride and just take that market share effectively instantly. Now unfortunately, and this is something I repeatedly talk about on my YouTube channel and it's something I promote. Like I always say, if there's one thing you're going to take out of my YouTube videos, it's this thing which is a first principles line of thinking. It's very easy and frankly lazy to say, oh, you know what, Waymo's going to come along, they're going to invent autonomous vehicle rides and just immediately take market share and Uber goes to zero. Very easy sort of thing to follow. But you got to kind of look at it on a deeper level and think from a first principles line of thinking how this would kind of play out. And so what you kind of have with that is Uber is a business today that operates in 70 countries with 200 million monthly active users. They have 9 million drivers. It's a sort of network effect that has a global footprint. They're doing 11 billion rides. And you don't just spin that up, you don't vibe Code that you don't just spin that up in a weekend. Right. And there's a lot of different barriers to entry and that Uber has kind of developed and worked through over the past 15 years to get to that point. The main thing, and I have five or six different reasons why I believe autonomous vehicles won't, quote, unquote, disrupt Uber. But the main thing that nobody has answered yet, and trust me, I've talked to a lot of people that hold the opposite opinion on this, on this matter, is the sort of supply, demand issue, and we talked about this on the last podcast as well, where basically there is variability in terms of the demand of Ubers. And they have this chart in their earnings material as well. It's the Q4 or 2024. Right. If you want to pull it up. And so they kind of showcase that. Like, for example, if we take the city of Toronto, on average throughout a week, there's a thousand rides being requested per hour. Right. But what you have with that is during rush hour, so when people are going to work, say between the hours of 8 to 9am, there's a increase in demand, there's a surge in demand. So there's roughly 2,000 rides being requested. And then if you look at, you know, a little bit after midnight, it's significantly less. There's only, say, I don't know, 100 or 200 rides being requested. Yeah, right there. So as you can see, there's sort of these like peaks in terms of demand and then there's a trough in terms of demand, of course, going with the hours of the day. And then obviously you see on, for example, a Friday night, there's an increase in demand because people are going out and whatnot. And it kind of fluctuates above and below the baseline. Right. So what you have with that is if you have a fixed supply of autonomous vehicles, say, I don't know, 500 vehicles or something, at any given point, you're either under monetized or over monetized in terms of how many cars could, could kind of carry out those rides. Right. And the argument that Uber makes is that if you come onto the network, then we can kind of have a hybrid model of bring on humans as there's surges in demand and kind of take those humans off of the, of off of the network when there's a trough in demand. And then as a result of that, if you're a Waymo, if you're a Tesla, if you're whoever, it doesn't matter. There's like you know, 10, 20 of these AV companies. Right. If you're any of these AV companies, we will maximize revenue per car. That's the bottom line. And it's the truth that if you have a hybrid network, Uber will be able to maximize revenue per car for you, the autonomous vehicle company.
Brett Shafer
And for any of the listeners that aren't looking at the charts there, it's pretty. It's very similar to one of those sinusoidal charts you'll see from an electricity consumption, you know, utility, where they have the base load, the baseline of what you have for your lowest. And then throughout the day, you're going to have, if it's a warmer area, more AC usage during the middle of the day or at night, you're going to have heat on in a colder area where there's different uses for electricity. That's similar for this, where you may have your base load in a certain geographical area, a hundred Uber drivers, but then at a certain time of night, you're going to have the need for 300. And I think what you're trying to say, Arias, maybe connect it back to the customer standpoint is if you only had that fixed amount of Waymos or what have you out there, you would have a lot of upset customers at midnight or 10pm on a Friday night. And Uber, that's very, very hard unless you're an Uber's position to solve. Now, I guess I'm leading into. I'm stealing one of Ryan's questions here, but what other advantages does Uber have? Maybe keep going down ice. You said you have five or six questions or points there.
Arya Radnia
Yeah.
Brett Shafer
What else helps them in the autonomous threat?
Arya Radnia
Yeah. So defensibility against, quote, unquote, the autonomous threat, which again, I don't personally believe in. But, for example, just the technology being solved is another issue. So at the moment, like, Waymo is technically the only one that has, like seriously solved Level 4 autonomous driving. Tesla has not solved it, although they claim, you know, there's no driver in the car. Maybe there's somebody remote controlling it back at Tesla headquarters, Whatever the case is. Anyways, that's kind of slow. It's been slow, right? It's been slow. I'm sure over the next five, seven, maybe 10 years, this does end up getting solved. Although there's an argument of the last 10% is. Or the last 1% is really difficult to solve. Whatever the case is, anyways, that's a bit of an issue. But even when the technology gets solved with Waymos today, it's only across the sunshine belt. So, I mean, it only works in, like, perfect weather situations. I personally live in Toronto and I can tell you the roads here in the winter are absolutely brutal. I guarantee you that there's not going to be a autonomous vehicle anytime soon that is able to drive in really bad weather conditions, call it two, three months out of the year. And so that kind of creates another barrier to entry in terms of autonomous vehicles kind of going global and whatnot. Additionally, if you expand internationally, I'm sure, Brett, I believe you frequently visit South America and you could probably attest to this. The roads there are drastically different in terms of the quality of the driving and the roads themselves being patchy or not having worked on whatever the case is. Right. So there's that element to it as well where, like, this is not a sort of, you know, you solve it in the United States with like, perfect conditions and it immediately kind of translate internationally. There's also the fleet management cost. Right. There's another point of who's going to pay for the cleaning of these cars and the charging of them and, you know, all these different things. Even in the event of, for example, Tesla, who is saying that, like, you know, their customers who own the cars are going to be doing this. Again, like, I raised some questions in terms of, like, how many people are going to, you know, have no personal belongings in their car and just kind of send it off, Right? Like, there's a lot of questions to be had with that sort of stuff. There's miscellaneous stuff. So it's like, you know, lost items. How do you go about doing that? Right? Like, these are all tiny little things that Uber has solved over 15 years that I just, I don't think you just spin this up in the span of a year or something like that. And not to mention, you know, if Waymo or something does try to go independent, you of course have autonomous vehicle partners that do not have the distribution of, say, a Google, right? Like there's Neuro and Avrite and We Ride and all these different companies that are currently working on solving it. So if the customer today has the Uber app and they can get an autonomous vehicle on the Uber app, what is their incentive to download a whole different app, put their credit card in, you know, they have saved addresses inside of the Uber app that all that type of stuff. I know, me personally, for example, if I go on the uber app at 9am, it's immediately saying, oh, would you like to go to the train station? It's like the top result, right? They have all this sort of data on you, the Uber customer over however long you've been using. So there are mild switching costs. The point is not any of these things alone is enough to kind of defend against the AV threat. I think it's all of the tiny little things that add up that kind of create a barrier.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
I think something you raised in your first point there. Yeah, so it's every one, I think every single one of these, I guess counter arguments in isolation. You could say, well, Waymo's got a bazillion engineers, whatever, they can spin something up like this, they can compete. But like you said altogether at the moment it seems like Uber provides a better service, but the one that always kind of sticks with me. And I think this is basically your first point or touches on it as well. If you are one of these self driving companies, the cost to build a car are expensive at the moment. Maybe it'll come down, but they're expensive. Even the richest companies in the world, you want full utilization. You want the car to be working as much as it can to recoup your investment. If you don't use Uber. Now, maybe there are certain cities like San Francisco where it's like super tech savvy and everyone's ready to get on Waymo. But if you don't use Uber, it's harder to meet full utilization. And I think Waymo's seen that. That's why they've partnered with Uber in so many markets. Austin, I live in Austin. You can't get a Waymo unless you go through Uber. It is the easiest way to get return on your cars. And if Waymo is already doing it, which is nearly the most one of the richest companies in the world, I think the other companies are even more likely to want full utilization. So I agree it seems like this is something where the partnership gives. Even though you don't have full control of your ecosystem, if you partner with Uber, it gives you much better economics probably it's not really a loss leader. And so anyway, I guess I'll let you keep going on if you have any more add ons to why it makes sense to partner with Uber in these markets. But I also want, I want you to use the counter argument here. What would the disadvantages be? Why would what is sort of give yourself the. The bear thesis. Why would someone avoid Uber?
Arya Radnia
Yeah, so the bear thesis is you don't own the customer relationship, right? So they are interacting with the Uber app. They are getting. The customer in their head is getting an Uber. It just so happens that an Autonomous vehicle shows up. Maybe you have some sort of branding of oh, this is a Neuro autonomous vehicle, this is a Waymo. Right? Whatever the case is that that is sort of the disadvantage of partnering up with an Uber in the place of, for example, a Waymo. I would imagine that becomes a pretty important thing to try to own and stuff like that on the distribution on their own app and whatnot. And you know, it kind of puts you at a disadvantage because Uber could one day wake up and say, you know what? We've been taking 20% take rate from you guys, we're moving it up to 25%. What are you going to do? You've built a whole business, you're super reliant on us being on here. What are you going to do? Go list on Lyft over there. And you know, Lyft is just an inferior service altogether because it takes longer for the rides to arrive, there's less customers. Just classic network effect, right? Like the biggest network effect is generally the better service. But I would say for most of these AV companies, the downsides, excuse me, the upsides or sorry, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for listing on, on an Uber, right? So if you, for example, we've kind of seen this play with the OTAs and the travel market, right? Like why do all these different companies, and we'll take the Expedia case, but like why does a Marriott have their own website, have their own app, have all their own assets, but then also list on an Expedia they're taking, you know, I think 15% less take rate, give or take. Why would they do that? Well, they're trying to maximize revenue per hotel or whatever the case is, right? Like you would way rather have a hotel room with 15% less gross margin generate some sort of revenues than just have it generate no revenues at all? That's just plain mathematics, right? Like it's an analogy.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
I like that analogy.
Arya Radnia
That's something. Dara, the CEO, he actually used to be the CEO of Expedia. That's an analogy that he's kind of given out.
Brett Shafer
One quick follow up on the different cities strategy where it seems like both Uber and Waymo as the largest player are testing different strategies in different CITIES in the U.S. is there any data specifically that Uber has provided that when these, when Waymo specifically partners with them, Waymo sees better outcomes. Have they, have they talked about that at all?
Arya Radnia
So in the most recent conference call, the Q3, 20, 20 something interesting and they said this is only the early innings of it, you know, blah, blah, blah, like there's too little data to kind of draw a conclusion from this. But they did talk about how when they introduced AVs into Austin and Atlanta, specifically total driver's earnings, so including non autonomous vehicles, total driver's earnings accelerated in terms of like earnings per hour or whatever. So the drivers were earning more. And what that tells you is when AVs get introduced into a market, the total pie grows and accelerates in terms of growth, again, very early data, this is just two cities that they've done this in the span of, I don't know, like literally a quarter. So things can fluctuate. Right? But this has kind of been the thesis all along and you kind of saw kind of similar thing with ChatGPT versus Google and like the argument of like, okay, total pie of searches, people are just going to search more, right? So like even in the event that ChatGPT takes a big market share of searches, shouldn't matter too much because total searches grow at an accelerated pace. You're seeing something similar, or at least it kind of sounds similar to me in terms of Uber and avs, is when AVS get introduced, the total pie grows.
Brett Shafer
Okay, I have one final question on autonomous vehicles. And then after listeners, don't worry, we're not just going to talk in circles about this forever. We have deliveries, moonshots growing the overall tailwind, user penetration and valuing the stock. So to tease that we'll be talking about that later, but I want to steel man, what a lot of the ultra bulls in the tech community might say, or investors might say around autonomous vehicles, where just imagine a world where whatever technological leaps they make, Waymo becomes the by far market share leader in autonomous vehicles. And they have, let's say 90% revenue overlap. Okay, how am I trying to say this? They can cover 90% of Uber's existing revenue geographies, where it might not be the total geographies, but if it's centered on urban areas, they can overlap with that. What would in that situation? If Waymo said, and again they're owned by Alphabet, so they could do this if they wanted to. If they said we're eliminating our relationship with Uber, everyone can use Google Maps to pay for Waymos, they try to really eliminate that relationship and go to war with the company, what would Uber's advantages be? How could they defend themselves in that situation?
Arya Radnia
Yeah, I mean, I think it just goes back to the base supply demand issue, right? Like if you are going to be independent of Uber, you will be under monetized or you will be over monetized at any given hour throughout the week. That is just plain fact. And if you list on Uber, the bottom line is this, you will maximize utilization, you will maximize revenue per car. And if you go independent of Uber, you would actually have to be subscale. So like if there's a thousand rides being requested per hour, your peak as a Waymo as independent, you have to be like, you know, at the trough there, you have to be at like 300 cars per city, whatever the case is, right? So like it's long story short, like if you want to kind of, you know, have significant market share in this game and try to maximize that revenue per car, you have to go through an Uber. Um, your, your question was it covers 90% of the cities, basically.
Brett Shafer
Okay, it's hard to describe this audibly, but let's say Waymo, they can cover 90% and this would be globally too. 90% of the geography where Uber makes money. And then they say, we don't need Uber anymore, we're going straight to Google Maps or what have you, or a separate app and saying, look, you can buy your Waymo's through this. We cover 90% of the area. Besides, maybe. And again, that is a very, very good defense there that you have that oscillating demand. Besides that, is there any way they can defend themselves from an Alphabet going full scorched earth and trying to steal and go their own route vertically integrated?
Ryan Henderson
All right folks, before we move on, let's talk about our home for investment research, Fiscal AI. Fiscal AI is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors. We use it as every single day.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Here at Chit Chat Stocks.
Ryan Henderson
It has everything you need to research individual companies from 20 years of financial data to company specific segments and KPIs earnings call transcripts, Morningstar reports and insider ownership data, and much, much more. And they just lowered the price of their Highest tier by 60%. If you want a complete enterprise grade financial data terminal, check out Fiscal AI. If you use our link, Fiscal AI Chitchat, you will automatically get two weeks of Fiscal Pro for free. Free, no card required. And if you want to upgrade, our link will get you 15% off any paid plan. Again, that's fiscal AI chitchat. The link will be in the show notes.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, I mean there's also like, you know, even if we say, okay, wayo, for whatever reason wants to operate independently, you know, Alphabet has infinite money, they're going to, you know, lose money on this for the next decade, no problem. Right? Although I do argue that they have bigger battles to win with you know, cloud and stuff like that and dumping billions and billions of capex into that. Anyways, let's just say they dump a whole bunch of money at this and, and they try to kill Uber right. For whatever reason. Again like Uber will have other autonomous vehicle companies they like. Waymo is not the only AV company in the world. There's Rewrite, there's Pony AI which Chinese based. There's Neuro which they're partnered with the Lucid Neuro deal, you guys might have heard of them about six months back.
Brett Shafer
Maybe.
Arya Radnia
But it's like Lucidars with Neuro software. Anyways, it's another partner. They're going to start having autonomous vehicle rides in the, in the States I believe starting this year. Right. So there's a lot of different companies. Nvidia is actually making self driving software. So if I believe like Hondas and Mercedes cars and stuff like that, like the lane staying in the same lane and stuff like that, the auto parking like that's, that's I believe Nvidia software that is in those cars like literally today. And so you got to imagine that kind of serves as well like another sort of partner for them and whatnot. So the point is even if Waymo is independent and they become a credible competitor, you would have all these different options that can list on the Uber app and for those, you know, companies that don't have a Google style distribution, they would be another option and Uber can compete that way.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
That's a good point is like if you're Waymo and you decide screw you but we're going to go for it ourselves, you are potentially opening the door for another AV competitor to have better brand awareness, better more trips, more data, better utilization, potentially kind of sacrificing your competitive positioning in lieu of trying to have slightly better, trying to get rid of your take rate I guess that the Uber's taken. I think that's pretty much all the questions around AVs. I guess one thing I would ask, I'm curious on this the last one last, last, last time I'll say this would let's say tomorrow Uber announced they're doing self driving themselves. Would you like that or not?
Arya Radnia
So they, they will not be doing self driving. They spun out Aurora, which used to be their self driving sort of company that I believe that was 2020 during the pandemic. They, they spun it out. What is a sort of a question mark which we will see a little bit more is will Uber lean in with their balance sheet. So will they start owning these fleets? That's the big question that we got to ask. And how does that change the business model? The business model fundamentally. So because it's traditionally been a very, very capital light business and you know, obviously owning the fleets of, of cars, this is going to cost, it's going to be capital intensive. Right now my argument back is Uber has always invested massively upfront at a huge loss, right? Whether They've launched roughly 10 to 15 products including the core delivery, the, the mobility, grocery, retail, Uber One, this and that, whatever, right? They have roughly 10 different products that they've launched throughout their existence. And they've always lost minus 50% operating margins when they're trying to kind of gain adoption with this. That sort of investment upfront has changed from being an operating expense to a capital expenditure expense. So it's just changed form in terms of registering a loss upfront to kind of gain adoption. They have recently kind of vouched that with the lucid Neuro deal in specific, I think they're putting up about 350 or $400 million of investment to kind of own part of those cars. And then they did talk about again in the recent earnings call that they do expect these fleets of cars once the business model is kind of proven that they become financialized. So a private equity or, you know, kind of like how we have REITs for like hotels and hospitals and stuff like that. There will be dedicated REITs to own fleets of cars because it's a very predictable say 5%, 6% yield. And so there will be investors that are willing to pay for that, that they can eventually kind of offload the fleets of cars over time.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Securitization of everything.
Brett Shafer
Yes, that's how the, that's how civilization's built. Let's pivot to Delivery. First, is UberEats profitable? A lot of people have this perception it's not. Let's just get the baseline. Is it profitable?
Arya Radnia
Yes, yes, it is definitely profitable. It's profitable on a adjusted EBITDA margin. So I'm sure you guys don't love that. Although to my understanding, their adjusted EBITDA is a bit cleaner than some of the egregious cases out there. The famous lemonade chart, if you guys remember that one.
Brett Shafer
Yes sir. Yes sir. But it's segment EBITDA essentially. So you kind of just knock it off maybe to a slightly lower margin. If, if you're trying to go full.
Arya Radnia
Full bottom line, it's. Yeah, but both the segments are profitable I believe the freight business actually isn't profitable. But you know, they're starting to kind of. They're probably going to see a bit of a tapering off in terms of margin expansion. They've kind of communicated that to shareholders because they see a lot of different opportunities for growth. So that's the thing to note kind of with that they've.
Brett Shafer
Yeah, so they've proven that this business can be profitable. Now they're trying to expand it in other avenues. Talk about the new avenues into grocery and retail because this seems like similar to how DoorDash is going about this. It's maybe not a risk, but it's a huge opportunity for them to tackle this new market, maybe even try to go after the Amazon's, temu's, Walmarts of the world. What is their strategy there and how do you think they're doing?
Arya Radnia
Yeah, so this might seem stupid from a surface level of like, oh, why would you ever, you know, Uber Eats Grocery to your house, isn't that right? Like so a lot of people kind of have that gut reaction to that. They outline it's a $10 trillion TAM. Realistically, they're not even going to come close to scratching in the trillions of dollars in terms of revenues. Yeah, Grocery, broadly Speaking is a $10 trillion industry. Right. Okay, great. No, but what you will likely have is. And they kind of talk about this, it's like people aren't kind of using them the way like they use an instacart where it's like, you know, they're ordering all of their groceries to come to their house. They're using it as a more. There's like small basket sizes and large basket sizes. They're using it for like oh, you know what, we ran out of pasta sauce and this and that and whatever. And they order like, you know, four to 10 items, whatever the case is, because it's convenient and whatnot and they get that delivered to their house. And so that's kind of how they're treating it. And then there's a lot of fun stuff to be had with Eats in particular and by extension Grocery, where you know, if you start to pick up on these behavior patterns of like oh, people who buy pasta sauce, then they probably want pasta as well. And like there's a lot of cross sell opportunities like that. They can directly start generating higher advertising revenues with brands specifically. So again, if you for example, just search cereal in the Uber Eats app, maybe it could be a Kellogg's cereal that they put in front of you and That's a Kellogg's ad that, you know, gets routed through Walmart. Whatever the case is, there's a lot of cool advertising opportunities. It's a small business for them. At the moment it's $10 billion of gross bookings, which is 5% of the total Uber business. So it's not big, but it's growing really fast. There's grocery and retail. There's a bit of, on the retail side, some interesting stuff in terms of like, you know, if you need something in the next 30 minutes to an hour, in most cases you're not going to be able to get that off Amazon. Amazon is, you know, same day delivery at best for most geographies. So there's an argument to be made that like in terms of speed and convenience, Uber can kind of eat into the Amazon moat a little bit. I'm a big Amazon shareholder, it's actually my biggest position. But they can eat into that a little bit. If you really need batteries, for example, you just Uber eats it 30 minutes later, it's at your door. Right. So stuff like that.
Brett Shafer
Yeah, I think it almost kills the convenience store business or maybe that kills it, potentially disrupts it and changes that whole market. What is in your mind, the growth potential for advertising in the eats business? I know the rides business, there may be some potential it could be advertised in some fashion, but with eats it seems more straightforward. Feels to me that they have a really, really large market opportunity here. How big is the business today and how big do you think it could get in the future?
Arya Radnia
Yeah, for sure. So the advertising has been a huge reason why the company is profitable. I mean, I don't think I need to tell you how profitable advertising is, but it's a $1.5 billion run rate business for them. So that's taking one quarter and multiplying by four. And that if we're saying that's 100% margin, which it isn't, but that accounts for, you know, that'd be roughly one third of their operating profits thereabouts. It's growing 60% year on year. And some key advantage that I think Uber and also Amazon has over some of the other advertising players is it's very high intent advertising. So for example, if we take a meta, right, like they kind of have to guess like, oh, does Aria want to see this T shirt? Would he buy this T shirt based off of what he's liked and his watch time on, on the reels when he's scrol it and this and that? Right. They have to kind of guess which it works well. It's a massive business of course, but with Uber in specific and also Amazon, you quite literally search up what you're looking for. If I'm typing in pizza in the Uber Eats app, take a wild guess what I'm looking for. Right. Like it's very, very obvious. And so they could put like a domino's buy one, get one offer right in front of you as you search that. And that's very, very targeted advertising for Uber. And so that's, that's going to be demanding a higher price and it's going to be a very successful business for them in my personal opinion. I mean it's growing 60% year kind of speaks for itself.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Yeah, it's, it's pretty obviously high value ad inventory. Like whether you are a consumer packaged goods brand and they're people are searching for groceries, like if someone looks up peanut butter, you know, Smuckers or whatever can lob an ad at them, it's very, it's, it's very easy ad inventory to sell, I would imagine. I think Instacart's pretty much proof of that. They've, they've done that business very well. And then the same with restaurants. I think that makes sense. And I pulled up that chart of the delivery adjusted ebitda. It seems like this could be an exceptionally profitable business and they've shown that even if we don't take adjusted EBITDA at face value here, it's likely that this is still very profitable. Let's shift gears Bre.
Ryan Henderson
Unless you have.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Oh yeah, go ahead.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, if I can quickly add another very cool thing they've done with the eats business is obviously they want sort of, as I mentioned, like they invest upfront at a loss to kind of get more, you know, users and stuff like that, get higher frequency of transactions and whatnot. Something so genius that they recently did, I believe in like the last year and a half and I saw this with my own two eyes with a local restaurant. They implemented these things called merchant funded offers. So this is like buy one, get one free, buy one, get a dessert half off, whatever the case is. Right. So it's these merchant funded offers. And their pitch to restaurant owners was okay, sure you are technically, you know, if you sell two things for the price of one, you are probably incurring a loss or you know, that's a massive reduction in terms of the margins of what you're selling, but it improves the visibility in your local area. And I 100% have seen this with one of the local restaurants near me is they run for lunch. This buy one, get one offer, which is a steal. And it's. It's packed. That place is packed. Now. Every time you go for dinner is massively raised. The visibility of that restaurant in the local area. And I would. It's kind of like a marketing sort of thing that they can do for. For these different restaurants. Right. So it's kind of a cool little thing they're doing there.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. Let's shift gears a little bit to. I guess maybe this is a chance. We could talk about freight as well. But what moonshot projects are they tackling today? And then if you can talk about anything in their investment portfolio as well.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So I would say, you know, everything I've outlined in the past little while, like, that makes me super excited. The core business, everything like that. I love the company. Right. But what really gets me excited with the Uber investment is the sheer amount of optionality that this company has. And, you know, we talk about Airbnb as having this company as being this company with huge amounts of optionality. I would personally say Uber might be ahead of Airbnb on that front. Right. So they have. They're essentially a demand aggregator. Right. And they can aggregate demand on all these different sort of like, fragmented markets. Historically, it has been, you know, mobility with taxis, then delivery. Now they're diving into grocery and retail. Massively investing into that. But over time, you should see, and they recently announced this, they put 40 ski resorts on the Uber mobility app. So you can book a stay or, like, you know, you could buy tickets to. To go skiing off of the Uber app. I believe this is in, I want to say, Utah or something like that, that they recently did this. And then additionally, like, you know, there's like Uber helicopter and stuff like that that, like, you can, you know, book a helicopter ride to. To go wherever. So it seems like random things that they're kind of working on. Another very interesting thing that they've started pushing within the app, you might have noticed, is rental cars. Rental cars. Other than a couple players, I believe Turo is one of them. Right, That's. You guys used to be AI. Aic. AIG shareholder, right? Back in the day.
Ryan Henderson
Aic.
Brett Shafer
Yes, yes, that is part of it as well. Yeah, they are. Oh, I forgot about that. They are doing that as well on the ski one. I think they were doing it in the state of Washington as well. I mean, it makes complete sense if you have a couple hours to drive to the ski lift area, you can have a specific vehicle to store your skis. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Yeah. Is it going to drive the business? No, no. But it's good to keep people around. Yeah, yeah.
Arya Radnia
These, these small little things, like out of every 10, 20 of these investment areas, one of them turns into an Uber eats business five, 10 years down the line. Right. So I'm not saying ski resorts is going to be like the big business for Uber. Not at all. But I'm saying between all these different investment areas, one of them, they strike a home run. Right. So I think rental cars has huge potential. It's $100 billion a year industry. I mean, if you just take 5% of that over the next, call it five years or whatever the case is. Right. Like that is a significant, significant business for them that they'll be able to kind of generate revenues from and it becomes that much more sticky and they own that much more mind share with the consumer of. Oh, if I literally want to book anything fragmented, I could probably just go on the Uber app. You know, there's like career. So like if you want to send a package, you can now do that with Uber. There's Uber Pet. Right. Like, there's all these different things. Uber Health is another one, another vertical that they're starting to invest in. So whole bunch of stuff that they got going on.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
So just following up there, Uber rentals, you mentioned Turo, is this. Are they sort of an aggregator for rental car services or is this a, like, I'm Ryan Henderson, I've got my Toyota, I'm gonna list it and someone can go drive it.
Arya Radnia
Yeah. So as it stands currently, it's like, for example, like Hertz or something like that that has a fleet of cars. It would be a Hertz car that you're kind of renting from. So there being a demand aggregator for a Hertz. And I don't know the other names. Enterprise is another one maybe. Right. Some of these rental car companies, bunch.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Of them, they all go bankrupt frequently. Yeah, no. Okay, I like that. I mean, it seems like an industry that is ripe for aggregation. So I don't have to go through the enterprise rent a car websites anymore.
Arya Radnia
If I can add, by the way, on the driver side. So there's a question mark of like, okay, if Uber doesn't. Sorry, if AVs, don't kill Uber. Now you have 9 million drivers that are out of a job or, you know, a significant number of drivers that no longer have that gig economy job. They've started Uber AI solutions, which is essentially like just data labeling for LLMs and stuff like that. And so that has started to kind of gain traction as well that they're working with, you know, these LLMs to kind of like basically say, like, oh, this is an image of a carrot and data labeling, right. Or for security camera companies and stuff like that. These are services that a Uber driver, hey, you get a notifications, do you have two, three hours to just do this quick, you know, work or whatever that like you're labeling these, these images and whatnot and they can hop on, earn 50, 60 bucks, whatever the case is. Right. So it's become a platform for work as well. And that's a degree of optionality for the business as well.
Brett Shafer
What about the investment portfolio? Maybe you mentioned it briefly, but what do they own and is this a big part of the enterprise value? Because I know I kind of get lazy with it and don't really look and do all the math myself, but. But take anything the listeners threw, anything important there. All right, listeners, I want to take this time to remind you about the Emerging Moat Stock Research Service, a newsletter that will produce a stock research report every four weeks. Regular updates on existing stocks in the emerging moats universe. We have an upcoming schedule including a research report on Wix.com, we have interactive brokers, American Express, Nintendo, Airbnb, Nelnet and much more. Please, if you want, reach out and get a complimentary free trial. You can do that by contacting me through the link in the show notes and giving me a DM on substack. I hope you'll try out the service.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, this might have changed since the last time I've looked at the numbers because obviously these are companies and they fluctuate in terms of price. They have roughly $9 billion of investment spread across a whole bunch of different countries and geographies. Right. So essentially in markets where they realized we are spending way too much money to kind of gain traction, where maybe second place or third place, they kind of exited that market and took a stake in the leader. So China, famously, they've done this in Southeast Asia. They used to own, I believe, close to a 20% stake in Grab, but over time I think they've either been diluted or kind of sold that down. And then additionally in some markets, they've just outright bought the number one or the number two leader and kind of put their financial backing with that. I believe Turkey is a recent example of this. Trinidad Go or something like that is the name of it. And they they just bought it outright. Careem for Middle Eastern listeners, is a. Is a big one. They're actually more than just. They're kind of like a super app. It's more than just delivery and eats and whatnot. You can even book people to, like, come and do your laundry or like book people to come fix your furniture and whatnot. So they own, I believe it's an 80% stake that they bought in 2020 Careem in the Middle east, like UAE and Saudi Arabia and stuff like that kind of operates in that region. And so, yeah, they've. They've kind of invested in a variety of different companies and they also own a stake in Aurora, which is the autonomous vehicle company. Yeah. Across the board, it's either competitors that are in geographies they don't operate in, or it's AV companies.
Brett Shafer
Yeah.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
I'm looking now at the shareholder list here on Fiscal AI for Grab Holdings. They are the largest shareholder of Grab Own, more than Anthony Tan, the CEO himself. I guess SoftBank combined may have slightly more, but yeah, it's like more than a $3 billion stake in Grab. Let's talk take rate. So actually, maybe I'll save that for a second. Maybe we can go. Market penetration. So right now I believe Uber touts like a 15% user penetration in the United States. A, how. What do you think this can get to over time? And then B, why would they be able to grow this? What would be sort of the tailwinds helping them?
Arya Radnia
Yes. On the mobility side. I don't know. Honestly, Sky's the limit on that front. Especially, you know, if we go to an autonomous vehicle future, the cars start costing less. The sort of urbanization of cities. Right. Like all these different things that has a lot of room to grow. My personal opinion on the Eat side, what I will say is the CFO has actually directly kind of given us numbers on this at the moment. It also holds roughly a 15% market penetration. And they kind of look to Amazon, which has a 25% penetration of commerce. Right. And they talk about how like, you know, with their Eats business and their humble opinion, they think it can even be higher than that. It could get to like 35% in the. In the distant future. So in terms of, you know, penetration of sort of the taxi market or mobility market, whatever you want to call it, I would say, you know, we could probably be closing in on 30, 40, maybe 50% thereabouts over time.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
It's kind of funny how this is just pointless. Side note, but it's funny how when they estimate their TAM, they always say it's a massive TAM. If we can get to just 1% share, we'll have a massive business. And then they're like, but we have 15% market share also. So it's like, where do you draw the line?
Arya Radnia
Which.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Yeah, is it your TAM or which TAM is.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, exactly. Like they say. I hate when companies do that. But I don't know, I guess you got to do it for the headlines, right? It's like, oh, there's a trillion dollar opportunity in autonomous vehicles. Yeah. I mean like across, you know, the entire world and maybe with all the different competitors. Yeah, maybe, maybe it might get to trillion dollars of revenues, but like, you guys are not even going to come close to scratching that.
Brett Shafer
The worst one was circle, that said all of the total currencies in circulation. So a hundred trillion, that was my all time favorite. That's your market opportunity. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that all makes sense. What about, I guess maybe before we hit valuation. Let's talk take rate. This is a question from Twitter. Slash X. Thank you for everyone that participates in that. If you want to ask questions for any podcast guests or any episodes that we do, make sure to do that. We'll usually put out a tweet on Twitter in the substack chat. Both are free for you to access. Can they expand the take rate? Do you expect them to? Or what's kind of the game plan there? What they've said versus maybe what you expect.
Arya Radnia
So a little bit of fun history with the CEO Dara Khosrow Shahi is his last name. Brett, I know you had a bit of difficulty pronouncing that before, but with him, yes, I did.
Brett Shafer
That's a hard one.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, yeah, Persian last name, you know. But no, he had. And he was the former CEO of Expedia for 13 years. And I wouldn't say he's directly the reason why, but you know, Expedia made some strategic mistakes in terms of having way too high of a take rate and kind of losing market share within Europe specifically. And he's directly said fat pigs get slaughtered. Right, that's that. That's a saying. And so he wants to kind of use the take rate as a sort of last measure in terms of improving profits or whatnot. They have raised the take rate in the past, like just in the sequence of, I don't know, roughly four to six quarters or so. They went from roughly a 20% take rate to a 30% take rate. And it's actually came down a little bit about 27% as it stands today. And so that's kind of where they want to keep it. They don't want to increase that take rate a lot more. It kind of puts pressure on the network and the drivers and it starts to kind of break things. Right. And at the same time, if you do raise the take rate way too much to drive incremental growth, then it kind of opens the door for a lower take rate competitor to come along and take market share and take your drivers. So they've kind of outlined that they don't want to increase that. And I believe it's the right decision to be making. I think you can just grow through, you know, increased audience coming onto the platform, increased frequency, so on and so forth. There's other ways to grow.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
All right, let's talk valuation. Where do we stand today and how, how are you valuing it? What metric do you use? Obviously we talked about before we hit record about some of the nuances in needing to value this business because there's some one time stuff that's a little awkward. So talk us through that.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, so my favorite ratio to use is the price to innovation ratio from Kathy. What? I'm messing around. But no, in terms of actually valuing this business, it's quite difficult. There's a lot of different stuff going on. Margins are still increasing. So for example, my generally the ratio I like to use is ebitda, ebit. But in my opinion that doesn't work too well at the moment because they're starting to still increase those operating margins. So it's not a true reflection of the profitability at the business. You can't use pe. There's like a tax thing going on over the past 12 months. So I think when we lap that quarter it'll be better. And then at the same time, you can't really use free cash flows either because there's insurance reserves and stock based compensation. You got to factor in it factor in, it gets messy. I think at the moment the best ratio to use right now is probably either the forward PE or use the trailing price to ebt, which is earnings before taxes. And so if you look, you know, for example, on either of those two ratios at the moment it roughly trades at about 30 times earnings. Roughly. Right. Like if you kind of work through all the, all the messy math, that's kind of where you land at. And then you have a business that grows revenues roughly about 20% a little bit margin expansion, you're looking at EPS growth of in the low 20s percent, maybe a little bit faster with some buybacks. Right. So you're paying 30 times earnings for roughly 20 to 25% EPS growth over the next handful of years.
Brett Shafer
All right, I guess nothing to add there feels like a reasonable price if things keep progressing like this. But let's flip things around, invert the situation. What would cause you to sell? What are you looking for? Maybe one or multiple things to cause you to sell. And what would data would you need to see to add to your position?
Arya Radnia
Yeah, so in terms of av stuff like, I really can't imagine that would be one of the reasons I sell. Or like that takes significant market share and whatnot, I would say it's more like strategically, if they have any sort of strategic mishaps and whatnot, maybe they don't expand into certain geographies, whatever, they start lighting cash on fire, whatever the case is. If I see some sort of red flags in terms of investment areas or, you know, they don't push the gas in terms of Uber 1 or advertising and whatnot, stuff like that could, could kind of serve as a red flag. The main, like my own personal investment criteria, I generally try to hold these businesses, you know, ideally, like forever. But of course that's a bit of an unrealistic expectation. I would probably be selling based off valuation if I were to sell this business at some point in the future. If it's trading at, you know, 50, 60, like 50 or 60 times earnings, that's probably where I would kind of look at maybe trimming or reallocating to better opportunities. But in terms of the business, I really don't think anything would be naive of me, but I don't think they're going to do anything that would warrant me to sell is kind of what I'm trying to say.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
That is, yeah, it's always a good reason to have to sell is when the multiple has just expanded too far. That's definitely a good problem to have. Let me pose the question to you this way. If over the next five years your Uber investment is flat, it's gone nowhere, hasn't worked out. I would. Well, I guess it depends what the opportunity cost is, but I would say flat over the next five years is not working out, why do you think that would be? Why would that be the case?
Arya Radnia
Whoa. No, I've never really put much thought into that. One thing to add though, in terms of another reason I would tell is if growth went below 10%, which again, I don't think happens just through audience growth and frequency growth and stuff like that. For the stock to be flat over the next five years, you would have to see a 80, 90% market share company come along in AVS, whether that's a Tesla, a Waymo, whatever, and kind of eradicate the Uber business. That's what would have to happen. And even at that point it's like something like 25% of gross bookings come from the United States, which on a revenue basis is more. But like still like, it's not like the business goes to zero hours bankrupt. So yeah, in that case, I would say the stock could be flat five years from now is if a Tesla comes along and has 90% market share in autonomous vehicles and rapidly gains adoption and kind of disrupts Uber on that front. That's what would probably have to happen.
Brett Shafer
Okay, the last question for me, unless Ryan has one to add here, what is one thing you think investors are missing about Uber's business today? What do you think is misunderstood widely when you see people comment on Twitter, investment blogs, what have you about this business?
Arya Radnia
100%, I would have to say it's the sort of disconnect in terms of like how hard it is to replicate Uber's business. It's like people, well, to be honest with you, people refer to ServiceNow as having like zero mode and it's like just some garbage software. So I don't have high expectations with Twitter users, but yeah, there's a huge disconnect with people that have, you know, maybe never worked with tech or never really put much thought into it, or maybe newer investors and whatnot. And they sort of have this idea of like, yeah, you know, Google's just going to make an app and that's it, you know, what Uber's done for. Uber's just an app, right? Or like they don't necessarily kind of think about all these different mechanisms behind the business in terms of the algorithms, routing, the, you know, the supply and demand. And there's like a real network effect out there. All the different miscellaneous things, the fleet management, costs. Like there's so many different things that goes on behind the scenes that you just as a consumer, you don't think about. And there's just a massive disconnect in terms of like how easy it is to replicate the Uber business. If it was so easy, we'd have a hundred competitors. Like, there's a reason there isn't. Right? It's just Lyft and Uber.
Brett Shafer
It's true.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Supply is hard to replicate.
Brett Shafer
That's a good point. All right, Ryan, anything else before we close things out?
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
That's all for me. I think that was very helpful. Aria, let me pose this to you. Dara steps down. Oh, would that be a deal breaker for you?
Arya Radnia
I'd have to see who's his replacement, definitely. But he is. I would allocate a huge percentage of why I'm so confident in the business. By the way, listeners, if you get the chance, please listen to a couple Dara interviews. He is like, I just walk away every time thinking like, oh, that guy gets it. He just understands the business. He knows exactly what to do. There's so much confidence and humility in the way he speaks. Yeah, that would definitely be a big of a, a bit of an issue for me in terms of if he were to step down and his replacement isn't as good as a CEO, that would definitely knock it down in terms of confidence. Question for you though. Are you guys interested in opening a position? Because we kind of been dancing around.
Brett Shafer
This for a couple months. I am. I think I get a little bit greedy on these high quality businesses and I want them at like 20 to 25 times earnings, something like that. But I've been on the back and forth on the self driving threat and thinking through it more, listening to people like you. It's feels like they have a much more defensible position than you would assume at first glance. So, yeah, I guess I just get a little bit greedy on valuation on the entry multiple. 20, 25 times is maybe more where I'd be interested, but I'd like a little drawdown here and then I'd get back, then I'd maybe consider it.
Arya Radnia
You got to factor in growth here, right?
Brett Shafer
Exactly. That's what I'm saying. I'm greedy. I think it's going to work from here. I just, I'm, I'm a little greedy on entry.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
Entry price it is actually. Yeah. This gave me. Your comments around the AV situation, gave me a better sense of security as to whether or not that's like really going to disrupt the business. I, I think I would certainly err on the side of. No. It feels like aggregating the supply is still very valuable even to those AV companies. Brett and I actually have a running bet as to which company will be more valuable between Airbnb and Uber over the next call. It, I think. What was it initially? It was like we made this bet three years ago, Brett, but now it's, I think, are we renewing it? It's perpetual.
Brett Shafer
Perpetual, perpetual.
Co-host (possibly Ryan or Brett)
My guess is they'll both do well. Honestly, no.
Arya Radnia
I, I like the Airbnb business. But I'll definitely take Uber in that bet if I can pick a side here.
Brett Shafer
Yeah, if, if there's one thing that has hurt Airbnb vs Uber is Uber's been much, much better at expanding into new markets. Airbnb has kind of been stuck in their core business. That's a topic for a whole other podcast. Aria, let's wrap things up. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. Tell the listeners want to hear more from you where they can find you.
Arya Radnia
Yeah, absolutely. It's just my name, so Arya Radnia. I believe I'll be linked in the description or the show notes, wherever you guys are listening. And yeah, I talk, you know, kind of like this sort of style. Very much emphasis on qualitative research. I'm not going to just read you the stock price and the PE ratio. Very much focused on moats and analyzing fundamentals in the businesses. Reasonable projections into the future growth of the business. So just my name, Aria Radnia. You can find me on Twitter or YouTube. And yeah, the links.
Brett Shafer
Yeah, the links to that will be in the show notes. Thanks again for coming on. As a disclosure, we are not financial advisors. Anything we say on the show is not formal advice or recommendation. Ryan I or any podcast guests may hold securities discussed on this podcast, may have held them in the past and may buy, sell or hold them in the future. Thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode. We'll see you next time. Goodbye, everyone.
Episode: Uber Stock: Why This Investor Thinks There Is Still Massive Upside From Here (Ticker: UBER)
Date: January 21, 2026
Hosts: Ryan Henderson & Brett Schafer
Guest: Arya Radnia
This episode centers on Uber Technologies (UBER), exploring why recurring guest and investor Arya Radnia (fiscal AI, YouTube, Twitter) remains bullish on the stock’s upside. The discussion canvasses Uber’s business segments, global footprint, the impact and risks of autonomous vehicles (AVs), growth in delivery, burgeoning advertising opportunity, strategic “moonshots,” and the bear case. Throughout, Arya shares what he believes the market misunderstands about Uber and reflects on valuation and risk factors.
[02:24] Arya Radnia:
[03:53] Arya Radnia:
Quote:
"There’s still massive GDP countries... even in their mature countries there’s a lot of white space to continue their growth." — Arya, [06:19]
[08:15] Arya Radnia:
Quote:
"It’s very easy and frankly lazy to say, ‘Waymo’s going to come along… and Uber goes to zero.’ You gotta look at it on a deeper level." — Arya, [08:15]
Technological and Geographic Barriers:
Platform Moat:
[16:30] Co-host:
Quote:
"If you don’t use Uber... it’s harder to meet full utilization. And I think Waymo’s seen that. That’s why they’ve partnered with Uber in so many markets." — Co-host, [16:30]
[18:37] Arya Radnia:
[24:15] Brett Shafer:
Quote:
"If you want to maximize revenue per car, you have to go through an Uber." — Arya, [23:24]
[28:16] Arya Radnia:
[30:17] Arya Radnia:
[34:07] Arya Radnia:
Quote:
"If I’m typing in ‘pizza’ in the Uber Eats app, take a wild guess what I’m looking for... that’s very targeted advertising for Uber." — Arya, [34:07]
[36:19] Arya Radnia:
[37:43] Arya Radnia:
[42:51] Arya Radnia:
[45:15] Arya Radnia:
Quote:
"Sky’s the limit... we could probably be closing in on 30, 40, maybe 50% [penetration] thereabouts over time." — Arya, [45:15]
[47:30] Arya Radnia:
[49:18] Arya Radnia:
Quote:
"You're paying 30 times earnings for roughly 20 to 25% EPS growth over the next handful of years." — Arya, [49:18]
[54:01] Arya Radnia:
Quote:
"There’s just a massive disconnect in terms of how easy it is to replicate the Uber business. If it was so easy, we’d have 100 competitors. There’s a reason there isn’t." — Arya, [54:01]
[55:21] Arya Radnia:
Arya remains highly confident in Uber’s path, emphasizing the network effect, platform stickiness, and growth in both core and adjacent opportunities. Autonomous vehicles are seen as a complement and scaling challenge for competitors, not a terminal risk. The delivery and advertising businesses add margin and growth. The main risks are capital misallocation or unexpected slowdowns in growth.
Arya:
"Nothing would really make me want to sell, except if growth dropped below 10% or the multiple just got too high." — [51:02]
Hosts:
Ryan and Brett are intrigued, with Brett waiting for a lower entry multiple to get greedy, and Ryan acknowledging Arya’s AV thesis strengthened his sense of Uber’s position.
Note: This summary omits ads, intros/outros, and focuses strictly on actionable podcast content.