00:00There are parts of this country, America, where ride share is less pervasive.
00:05People don't use as much. Probably they drive their own car.
00:08You want to go after that market. Why and how?
00:13So the answer is we've gotten really good at obsessing over our customers
00:18and we want to take it bigger and go bigger.
00:20I mean, look, this is our 16th consecutive quarter of growth.
00:24You know, we're a profitable company.
00:26We're generating $900 million of cash.
00:29And yet, yet the ride share market is still tiny.
00:32160 billion rides in the United States every year.
00:34And we only do a couple, 3 billion between the two of us.
00:37So there's so much opportunity.
00:38It really is better to be in the back of the car having someone else drive you.
00:41And we want to do it in places like Indianapolis and others where, you know, the opportunity is even bigger.
00:46Cash, when last year on, which was just a few weeks ago, we were talking about M&A in Europe.
00:52And with respect, it was a modest deal.
00:55The buyback is clearly well received.
00:58Buy your investors.
00:59Yeah.
01:00But that would indicate that you have some ability to do M&A going forward.
01:05You know, do you see that in your capital plans?
01:08And if you did buy something, what would it be?
01:11So first, thanks for acknowledging.
01:13It's true.
01:14I mean, this is a business that is now generating nearly a billion of dollars of cash in the 12 months.
01:19So that's a wonderful place to be.
01:21Again, huge thanks to the incredible team that has been working so dang hard to make this business not only great for customers, but great for shareholders as well.
01:29So now the question is right.
01:30What are other opportunities?
01:31I would say our near-term focus is making the cash that we've got, you know, putting it to work.
01:36As you say, we just acquired FreeNow, which will allow us to expand internationally.
01:40You know, nothing more, obviously, to announce right now aside from the buyback, of course.
01:44But it's great to be in a strong position.
01:46We've got a strong balance sheet and a strong income statement.
01:48So it feels that's a good place to be.
01:50And it's a strong position that you managed to fend off engine capital, David, in terms of a pushy investor wanting changes, potentially at a board level.
01:59But they've withdrawn that because of what you've given to the investor base in terms of buybacks.
02:03David, is that a sigh of relief?
02:06I mean, you know, we talk to investors all the time.
02:09I would say maybe not so much the sigh of relief as much as just it absolutely allows us to continue to focus on our riders and our drivers.
02:17That's sort of the big thing.
02:19But it's great that investors are responding so well to what it is that we're doing.
02:22Again, share buyback is great.
02:24You know, profitable growth, you know, quarter after quarter, that's great.
02:27And this is what I've always said.
02:29It's customer obsession that drives profitable growth.
02:31And we're sort of seeing that play out now.
02:33And that customer obsession drives innovation, drives autonomous vehicles.
02:37I know you're looking at Atlanta.
02:38So you've got a partnership there.
02:40How much are you going to see driverless vehicles automatically?
02:43You're going to have safety drivers in the car.
02:45What is that going to look like as a pilot?
02:48Yeah, so this is a pilot that we're doing with Maine Mobility.
02:51First, let's step back.
02:52Autonomous vehicles are going to come, right?
02:53They're here in San Francisco.
02:55You see them everywhere.
02:56They're obviously in L.A. and Austin and other places as well.
02:59They'll come.
02:59It'll be many, many years before they're a big deal.
03:02But as they come, it's such a great opportunity for ride share and for lift because it allows us to, you know, provide better service, you know,
03:08using different technologies.
03:09As you say, we'll be starting in Atlanta in a couple of months, middle of the summer.
03:13We will start with a sort of a confidence driver, someone else in the car to kind of help make sure that people feel comfortable with what's going on there.
03:20It'll be a fairly small scale pilot.
03:21But this is something that will grow into Texas next year with a partnership with Mobileye and others.
03:27And then we'll just keep building and building and building to the point where drivers are driving millions of people and autonomous vehicles are driving millions of people as well.
03:34David, you're a technology CEO.
03:35And as such, you must field questions on economics and the state of trade and travel.
03:42It's our favorite thing to do.
03:43Everyone loves this question.
03:45Uber reflected on the idea of cross-border travel, Canada into the U.S., the inbound travel into the U.S. being soft business travel.
03:52People arrive at airports.
03:54Are they or are they not doing ride share?
03:55What are you seeing through the consumer about the state of this economy?
03:59Honestly, we're seeing strength.
04:01And I know a lot of people are trying to look.
04:02Granular, where, why, how?
04:04So I'll give you a couple of examples.
04:06Let's actually go back literally to earlier this week, Cinco de Mayo, right?
04:09That's not a holiday that's necessarily a huge thing.
04:11But at the same time, we saw one of our biggest Cinco de Mayos ever.
04:14It was a very, very strong day.
04:15Let's go back to the end of March.
04:17Last week in March was actually our strongest week ever in terms of ride volume.
04:20I think what we're seeing here is ride share has become a very sort of base staple part of so many people's lives that I don't really expect a sort of consumer sentiment fluctuates around to see that.
04:32Much difference.
04:33I'll talk about airports for just a second because you asked.
04:35Airports basically quarter to quarter are flat.
04:38It is true consumer, excuse me, commute is going up faster.
04:41So if you look at it that way, consumers growing a little bit faster, excuse me, commute, I keep saying that.
04:46But, you know, again, even when you look at airports, gosh, it's only one in five people who use ride share to get to airports in the first place.
04:52That means 80 percent is still out there for sort of the, you know, the picking.
04:56So I think our big focus is trying to expand the market.
04:58I don't think that the macro stuff is a big deal right now for us.
05:01You're growing in Canada, David.
05:03And it's interesting.
05:04I've asked this time and time again.
05:06I'll start of IBM.
05:07I'll start of UBASK of U.
05:08Is there any impact from being an American brand going into a country such as Canada right now?
05:13Because we are hearing of pushback.
05:1530 seconds.
05:16You know, it's so interesting.
05:18No is the real answer.
05:19In fact, we just got authorization to open in Quebec, in the province of Quebec, which we might have wondered whether it was going to happen given everything going on.
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