Uber delivered investors its first profitable quarter on an adjusted basis, thanks to a rapidly recovering rideshare business and the popularity of food delivery.
Uber’s preferred “adjusted ebitda” metric of the company’s underlying health excludes multiple costs including interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, as well as stock-based compensation.
On that basis, it eked out a $8m profit in this year’s third quarter, up $625m on the same period last year.
However, volatile activity in Uber’s investment portfolio caused it to swing to a generally accepted accounting principles net loss of $2.4bn, thanks to a $3.2bn negative revaluation of its stake in China’s Didi Chuxing.