UBER'S RECOVERY ACCELERATES, BUT WORRIES ABOUT LOSSES LINGER

Uber’s ride-hailing service is regaining the momentum that it lost during the pandemic, but it’s coming at a cost that’s raising more doubts about the company’s ability to make money.

At the same time, Uber’s unprofitable delivery service is still growing at a torrid pace, indicating that some homebound habits may be here to stay, even though people are going out again.

Those two trends produced Uber’s best quarterly report since the pandemic clobbered the San Francisco company 17 months ago.

The results announced for the April-June period included a rare profit that investors glossed over to focus on ongoing losses in Uber’s operations.

The second-quarter profit stemmed from a one-time gain of $1.4 billion to recognize recent increases in the values of Uber’s stakes in China’s leading ride-hailing service, Didi, and a self-driving car division that it recently handed off to Silicon Valley startup, Aurora.

Those accounting adjustments eclipsed Uber’s losses in its business, enabling the company to post a second-quarter profit of $1.14 billion, or 58 cents share, reversing a loss of $1.78 billion suffered in the same three-month period of 2020, during the early throes of the pandemic.