Uber’s food-delivery service and some of its foreign ride-hailing operations increasingly look like albatrosses weighing it down, rather than the sources of growth predicted by executives before the company’s IPO.
That suggests pressure is likely to grow on CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to consider merging Uber Eats with rival food delivery services or selling some of the overseas businesses, as Uber has done in the past.
That’s one takeaway from the ride-hailing giant’s second-quarter results, in which the company reported 26% growth in overall revenue, excluding some driver bonuses—a marked deceleration from a year earlier. Meanwhile, Uber burned through $1 billion in cash, more than last quarter. It also reported a whopping $5 billion net loss, although much of that was due to a stock compensation expense related to its IPO in May.
