Uber is on a roll. Through the first three quarters of this year, Uber racked up over $2.8 billion in operating cash flow, while posting a 21% increase in global bookings. Investors have taken notice; Uber’s stock price has more than doubled year-to-date.
On his most recent earnings call, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi attributed Uber’s success to “the growth flywheel we built, coupled with rigorous cost discipline, enabling us to generate strong leverage to exit the year with tremendous momentum and reliable execution.” But cutting through corporate-speak, Dara (as he prefers to be called) failed to mention the biggest factor driving Uber’s growing profitability. Dara has gone back to an old trick in Uber’s playbook: cutting driver pay. But this time, with a clever change in how the company pays its US drivers, disguising yet another pay cut, and allowing Uber to take a much bigger cut of passenger fares for itself. READ MORE