Uber Technologies, Inc. (UBER.US) Q3 Earnings Call: Driver shortages in Brazil and India weigh on mobility business; supply already showing improvement in October

Uber Technologies, Inc. (UBER.US) reported third-quarter 2026 results before the U.S. market opened on November 4. Revenue for the quarter was US$14.766 billion, up 10% year over year, above the FactSet estimate of US$14.66 billion; non-GAAP earnings per share were US$0.88, up 35%, above the expected US$0.86; gross bookings were US$59.819 billion, up 20%, slightly below the StreetAccount estimate of US$59.832 billion. Mobility revenue fell 2% year over year to US$7.520 billion, below the expected US$7.71 billion, and bookings growth slowed to 18%, making it the core topic of the call. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said mobility "grew healthily but below our expectations, because driver supply in several international markets failed to keep pace with strong consumer demand." Buoyed by accelerating profit and autonomous-driving progress, Uber Technologies, Inc. shares closed Wednesday up 4.91% at US$69.87, having touched a intraday high of US$72.50 before giving back half the gain. Khosrowshahi said October had already shown "encouraging improvement," and the company expects fourth-quarter gross bookings growth of 18% to 22%, in line with the third quarter. Focus and response The supply bottleneck in mobility was the call's biggest focus. Third-quarter mobility bookings were US$29.512 billion, up 18% year over year, a pace the company said was 1 to 2 percentage points below its own expectations; mobility revenue fell 2% to US$7.520 billion, below the US$7.71 billion StreetAccount tally, while segment operating profit rose 27% to US$2.362 billion. Management attributed the shortfall to supply rather than demand: CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy said the escalation of the Middle East war pushed up global fuel costs, hitting driver supply notably in price-sensitive emerging markets such as Brazil and India, while tighter immigration policy and peak-season demand amplified the gap, but he stressed "we are still encountering a supply constraint, not a demand constraint." The company said it has made targeted investments in driver acquisition, retention and engagement, with global supply hours growth accelerating in October and marked improvement in Brazil and India. Analysts pressed three times on the persistence of the supply issue and the scale of investment, and on whether the mobility segment's 8% margin can be sustained. Krishnamurthy responded that he would not point to any material change in the margin trajectory, and that fourth-quarter supply investment mainly affects the take rate rather than the margin. Delivery becomes the main growth engine Delivery bookings were US$28.539 billion, up 22% year over year, up 23% at constant currency, with organic growth accelerating; revenue was US$5.488 billion, up 23%; segment operating profit was US$1.057 billion, up 30%. Khosrowshahi said U.S. merchant count grew about 12% year over year, members now contribute 70% of delivery bookings, and Uber One has about 55 million members. Freight bookings were US$1.768 billion, up 35%, with operating loss narrowing to US$33 million. Grocery retail and dark stores The grocery and retail business has an annualized run rate of US$15 billion, up 40% year over year. The company said it has rolled out Costco nationwide and added partners including Target, Decathlon and Priceline in Australia, Tesco in the UK and Rewe in Germany. Krishnamurthy said dark stores are "a localized solution" that will not be rolled out everywhere, and that market conditions and return-on-asset requirements must be met before entering. Autonomous driving shifts to commercial execution Khosrowshahi said the focus of autonomous driving "is shifting from partnerships and testing to driverless commercial service." Zoox will launch on Uber Technologies, Inc. in Las Vegas later this month, with Motional moving to fully driverless operations shortly after; the platform will have about 700 vehicles by year-end, more than 2,000 by the end of 2027, and targets tens of thousands in 2028 and beyond. Krishnamurthy said that over the long term the company wants fleet financing to come from third-party capital rather than Uber Technologies, Inc.'s balance sheet, and that the company is satisfied with the returns available to third parties. Fourth-quarter guidance The company expects fourth-quarter gross bookings of US$63.25 billion to US$65.25 billion, up 18% to 22% year over year at constant currency, with a midpoint of US$64.25 billion, slightly below the StreetAccount tally of US$64.26 billion; non-GAAP earnings per share of US$0.95 to US$0.99, up 34% to 39% year over year, with the midpoint in line with the FactSet estimate of US$0.97. Capital allocation shifts toward integration The company repurchased US$750 million of common stock in the third quarter, for a cumulative US$4.279 billion in the first nine months. Khosrowshahi said the company will direct more resources toward organic growth and the autonomous-driving ecosystem and "pull back on M&A," with the current focus on integrating the announced Delivery Hero and ezCater deals. He said the premium business grew 35% year over year and Uber for Business (U4B) grew nearly 50%, the two main threads of the M&A strategy. AI agents still contribute very little Khosrowshahi said 75% of trips are completed through "one-click ordering," with an average ordering time of 50 seconds and a median reorder time for eaters of 90 seconds. In the week of Halloween, Uber Technologies, Inc. and Uber Eats combined completed about 320 million trips, of which about 500 Uber Eats orders and only 4 mobility orders came from AI agents. The company said transactions from agents are "very, very early," but more than 10 AI assistants are in talks on access terms. Competition and personnel Asked about a potential merger between DoorDash and Instacart, Khosrowshahi said "honestly, I don't think it would affect us much," and said merchants have proactively approached Uber Technologies, Inc. wanting to keep a second platform option if the merger goes through. Separately, President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Jill Hazelbaker is leaving after 10 years to join OpenAI. Full call transcript: I. Executive remarks Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer Thank you, Alex. The third quarter was another quarter of strong growth and continued margin expansion for Uber Technologies, Inc., with record platform users and engagement. We reached 215 million monthly active platform consumers, who are using Uber Technologies, Inc. more frequently than ever. That helped us deliver our fifth consecutive quarter of gross bookings growth above 20% year over year, alongside 35% non-GAAP EPS growth and record free cash flow of US$10.4 billion over the trailing 12 months. Mobility continued to grow healthily but below our expectations, because driver supply in several international markets failed to keep pace with strong consumer demand. We are responding with targeted investments to improve driver availability and marketplace balance, and we saw encouraging improvement in October. Our focus is on driving durable growth while maintaining strong profitability in the business. Delivery had another outstanding quarter, with gross bookings up 23% year over year and organic growth accelerating. Our investments in selection, affordability and reliability are making Uber Eats more useful for everyday occasions, from restaurant meals to weekly grocery runs to last-minute essentials. With about 55 million Uber One members, we are deepening consumer relationships across both mobility and delivery. These direct consumer relationships are at the heart of our AI strategy. We are using AI to make everyday transactions simpler and discovery more personalized, while selectively exploring new distribution channels that could bring incremental demand. On autonomous driving, our focus is shifting from partnerships and testing to driverless commercial service. Zoox will launch on Uber Technologies, Inc. in Las Vegas later this month, with Motional moving to fully driverless operations shortly after. We expect about 700 fully driverless vehicles on the Uber Technologies, Inc. platform by year-end and more than 2,000 by the end of 2027. Just as important, we are focused on demonstrating the utilization and economics required to scale. Heading into the fourth quarter, our priorities are clear: improve mobility supply, build on delivery momentum, deliver on autonomous milestones, and continue to grow profitably. Before I hand the call to the operator, I also want to recognize our President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Jill Hazelbaker. After 10 years at Uber Technologies, Inc., she is moving to OpenAI. That is a huge gain for them and a loss for us to lose someone like Jill. She has been a vital part of our culture. Fortunately, she has built a great team, many of whom will be promoted into more senior roles, and many work directly with me. So I want to thank Jill personally for these 10 years and for helping me in countless ways, professionally and personally. She is an outstanding advisor. This is a huge gain for OpenAI. I am really glad the team she built is ready to take on greater responsibility; they have fully earned it at the company. Thank you very much, Jill. With that, I will hand the call to the operator for questions. II. Q&A session Eric Sheridan, Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. analyst: capital arrangements and return metrics for EV fleet financing Q: Thank you very much for taking the question. I want to go back to the shareholder letter and the prepared remarks on EV fleet financing. Could you go a little deeper on how we should think about the balance sheet and incremental free cash flow, how much capital you want to allocate behind these efforts? And how should we think about returns, or how to align the economics with the commercial opportunity? Thank you very much. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): Thank you, Eric, I will take that. I think we are not yet in a position to say too much about the specific structures being designed. But I would point you to the US$1 billion financing arrangement we set up earlier this year with Banco Santander S.A. Sponsored ADR (Santander), which was for our traditional fleet partners. That can serve as a template for the arrangements we are working on for autonomous fleets in the coming months. We are actively pursuing these. Specifically, you should expect announcements on both infrastructure financing and vehicle financing. Our long-term expectation is that this should be financed by third-party capital rather than by Uber Technologies, Inc.'s balance sheet. Near term, as you saw in the announcement in the press release, we will have about 700 driverless vehicles on the network this year and 2,000 by the end of next year, and the capital outlay for those vehicles is relatively limited. But as we begin to scale to more than 10,000 in 2028 and beyond, we want to bring in third-party capital. We are satisfied with the investment returns available to third parties. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Eric, let me add one thing. We think financing for these vehicles will be somewhat unusual. If you look at financing for rental fleets and so on, it is based on the residual value of the vehicles, and I think the residual value of autonomous vehicles has not yet been established. So in the early stages, we will put these vehicles on our own balance sheet. We have a very strong balance sheet and the ability to do so. I think a lot of fleet financing will be based on the revenue potential of these fleets. What we can demonstrate is that vehicles on our network achieve very high utilization, actually higher than vehicles not on our network. We have shown a 30% utilization premium on the network. We can do this very flexibly. So if a fleet fails operationally for some reason, we can bring that autonomous vehicle into separate ownership and it can still earn money on the Uber Technologies, Inc. network. So we believe financing on the Uber Technologies, Inc. network has a real advantage in cost of capital versus the alternatives. That is the business model we are building with partners, and their response has actually been quite positive; they want to diversify risk. So we are quite optimistic about this, but we have to build the business model, prove the utilization advantage, show these to the banks, and then move forward. Nikhil Devnani, Bernstein analyst: international market supply gap and scale of investment Q: Thanks for taking the question. I want to follow up on the international supply dynamics you mentioned. I want to confirm whether something changed during the quarter. I remember last time we talked about Brazil, but now it seems more markets are reflecting this. If you could elaborate on what you saw during the quarter, that would be helpful. Also, looking ahead, how should we think about the supply-side investment required? Because some variables, such as immigration, feel more persistent. So understanding the scale and durability of these investments would be helpful, as you try to reaccelerate the business. Thank you. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): Okay, thank you Nikhil. What I would say is that a lot of this is a continuation of the various dynamics we have seen this year. If you look at the macro environment, as the Middle East war escalated, the impact of fuel costs has shown up globally. For us, it is most evident in emerging markets, where there is some price sensitivity on both the consumer and driver sides. What we talked about in Brazil last quarter was specifically the impact of delivery competition in the market on motorcycle supply. But over the past quarter, we have seen fuel prices rise in markets such as Brazil and India, with a fairly pronounced impact on supply conditions. Similarly, immigration dynamics have been present all year. But as we moved into the second half, we saw demand rise with the holiday season, demand was quite strong, and when supply is short, the impact of supply on the marketplace is amplified. That is also the situation we mentioned in Canada. Now, at our scale, that is a good problem to have. In operations, we are still encountering a supply constraint, not a demand constraint. We know how to address these kinds of challenges and have proven it historically. We are making targeted supply investments focused on driver acquisition, retention and engagement. As that investment progresses, we have been encouraged by the early signs of supply we saw in October, with global supply hours growth accelerating in October, including marked improvement in Brazil and India. So overall, you can see our outlook stable in the 18% to 22% growth range, in line with prior quarters. So we feel good about where we are, and the growth runway ahead is very long. Over the past five years, we have doubled our penetration of eligible benefit populations in our top 10 markets, but it is still only 10%. So we feel very good about the room ahead. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): I think we are also dealing with an additional factor: we are clearly facing year-over-year supply pressure, but also seasonal supply pressure, with September, October, November and December being our peak season for mobility and delivery. In some markets, such as Brazil, mobility and delivery rely on two-wheel capacity, which is one of the types of supply we need. So these factors are intertwined. It is a seasonal issue and a year-over-year issue happening at the same time. But we have a good handle on it. We are very optimistic about the October trends and the trends heading into the fourth quarter. And this is not the first time we have dealt with this. Next question. Brian Nowak, Morgan Stanley analyst: grocery retail's first-party capabilities and dark store strategy Q: Okay, thanks for taking the question. I want to ask about grocery. Strategically, talk about what investments you need to make in the U.S. grocery and retail business to accelerate further and compete in that space? How do you think about the need for stronger first-party (1P) capabilities, meaning owned dark stores or owned fulfillment operations? A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Okay, Brian. We are very excited about the progress in grocery and retail. We are currently at a US$15 billion annualized run rate, up 40% year over year. We think this is a US$10 trillion addressable market, a huge market for us. What we hear repeatedly from consumers is that they want more things, delivered faster, they want everything faster. When Amazon.com, Inc. launched overnight delivery, that was magic; now when hour delivery is magic, soon people will expect everything in 15 minutes. We are right in that space. Our investment areas are really selection, affordability and consumer experience. On selection, we are very excited to expand Costco nationwide. We have also added many international players, including Target, Decathlon and Priceline in Australia, Tesco in the UK, and Rewe in Germany. So we will continue to invest in assortment. As assortment increases, more consumers come online and conversion rises. We continue to invest in affordability, whether through Tuesday fresh promotions or free delivery on orders over US$60 for members, which members love. Then we continue to invest in product innovation to make picking and packing as accurate as possible. We invest in shopper quality, paying more to high-quality shoppers, and bring in technology, such as having shoppers take photos of empty shelves to verify that the item a customer is looking for is indeed not on the shelf. That also helps consumers; when they see an empty shelf they are not angry, it is not the shopper's fault, the item they want is just not there. That helps build trust between both sides of the marketplace. So for us, it is all about execution. On dark stores, our first priority has always been to work with partners and help them grow their businesses. We are very excited about Delivery Hero, which has built a sizable instant-retail and dark store business. The benefit of dark stores is that you have better control of inventory, higher pick-and-pack success rates, lower out-of-stock rates, so quality improves through vertical integration. That is a very exciting part of the potential Delivery Hero acquisition for us. That team has been building an instant-retail business for more than 7 to 8 years, has reached break-even, and is growing at a very attractive rate, and we very much look forward to bringing it into the portfolio once the Delivery Hero deal closes. One more point on the dark store question. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): For us, this is a localized solution. We do not want to enter this business everywhere, but it makes sense in some markets. As Dara mentioned, Delivery Hero has done very well with dark stores in the Middle East. We are also in a position to look at the Turkey business, both through our presence in that market and through the GATHER deal we have already completed, which is also close to profitability. We have also tried it organically in Taiwan. So ultimately, it has to be a business that can operate well, it has to meet market conditions, and there has to be a good return on assets when entering that space. We will be selective about where we participate. Otherwise, we will work with grocery partners, who are the experts in their field. Ron Josey, Citi analyst: geographic cadence of driverless fleet deployment Q: Okay, thanks for taking the question. I want to ask a bit more about the fully driverless rollout, from 700 this year to 2,000 next year. Can you help us understand the geographic cadence of the rollout? I remember you said 50% U.S. and 50% international, how are you thinking about that. Thank you. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Okay, sure. We are very excited. We already have some launches live. Obviously, we have partnered with Waymo in the U.S. market, and we have also launched driverless service in several international markets with WeRide and Baidu Inc Sponsored ADR Class A. We expect to launch Zoox and Motional in Las Vegas this year, as we mentioned. Next year, we expect to add Nuro in California, then in Houston, Texas, at least by early 2027. These are all fully driverless commercial passenger services. AV Ride will also launch in Texas mid-year. Internationally, we expect to add Pony (Pony.ai) and Momenta to our list of driverless vehicle operators. By late 2027, I do think we will be doing test rides and vehicle-operator testing with NVIDIA Corporation (NVIDIA), Rivian, hopefully Waabi, and Wayve outside the U.S. So the partner strategy and the portfolio of all these partners will really begin to compound, and we are quite confident about reaching 2,000 vehicles in 2027, but the real goal is tens of thousands in 2028 and beyond, truly scaling the ecosystem. And we have a presence in these markets, we have partnerships with cities, we have operations in those markets, and we do not need to build demand from scratch. Demand is already there. So I think we can launch for partners very quickly with high utilization, which makes us even more optimistic about the opportunity here. Shweta Kajuria, Wolfe Research analyst: autonomous unit economics and capital allocation Q: Thanks for taking the question. I want to ask two questions. First on autonomous unit economics. In the example you gave, paid trips increase 30% and fixed costs fall 23%. Even if partners pay Uber Technologies, Inc. a transaction fee or take rate, it is still incremental for them. So my question is, how durable is that 30% incremental paid trips? How durable is that advantage over the long term? The second question is on capital allocation strategy. You talked about this in the shareholder letter, there is no change there. In terms of priorities, you do not expect further M&A before year-end or after. But I want to ask what the logic behind ezCater is? How do you think about capital allocation going forward across mobility, delivery and autonomous driving? Thank you very much. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): Okay, Shweta. I will take the first question and Dara will add on the second. On the utilization uplift, I would first say we think this is a very durable advantage for Uber Technologies, Inc. For context, when we talk about a 30% uplift, we are comparing Uber Technologies, Inc.'s hybrid deployment in the U.S. with mature first-party deployments. Those mature first-party deployments have a structural advantage because they include San Francisco, which is particularly favorable for autonomous deployment right now. As deployments expand, we expect first-party deployments may see worse utilization than they see in San Francisco. In fact, that is exactly what we are seeing on the ground today. For Waymo and Tesla, Inc., the markets they entered this year are seeing trips per vehicle per day in the low teens, while we are seeing high twenties on our network in those hybrid markets. In fact, in those markets, our utilization is over 100%. I think another aspect is that we may also have advantages in other parts of unit economics. First, vehicle costs will decline over time, which is true for many participants. But overall, what we try to ensure is that when we work with OEMs, we can see favorable pricing due to scale. The second area where we will also have an advantage is shared charging, maintenance and fleet infrastructure, because these can be shared across multiple EV partners. I tend to analogize it to the advantage hyperscale cloud providers have over on-premise data centers serving a single enterprise. So I think those two, plus utilization, will underpin long-term economics. Our goal is for autonomous trips to deliver margins comparable to human-driven trips over time. Once above that level, we can share the savings with consumers and truly expand the addressable market. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Okay, on capital allocation and so on, our priorities have not changed. Obviously, the first priority is driving organic growth. On investment in the autonomous ecosystem, we talked about a US$10 billion commitment tied to certain deliverables, including investments and partners, as well as autonomous fleets, which is another priority. Then M&A and buybacks, and we have ample capital for both. We will shift toward the first two and pull back on M&A, mainly because we are really focused on integrating the announced deals, which overall are performing well. But we want to make sure we get the right cost of capital on M&A. If you look at our historical M&A thinking and where we are headed, it is mainly in a few categories. First, deals that expand geographic reach. If they let us serve more countries, Delivery Hero is an example, and so is Trendyol. Not only do we enter fast-growing new geographies, but it allows us to offer platform advantages, meaning mobility and delivery cross-promoting each other and membership programs cross-promoting each other, in more countries. We have a presence in many of Delivery Hero's markets, and this is simply a geographic extension of our platform. The second reason we focus on is that we can build specialized capabilities that we believe are truly profitable. We talked about the premium business growing, for example it grew 35% year over year, and our Uber for Business (U4B) business grew nearly 50% year over year. So premium is our theme, enterprise is our theme, and this is where we want to double down. For example, that is the Blacklane and ezCater acquisitions, which you asked about. Blacklane gives us more specialized high-quality capacity, and ezCater has specialized capability, working only with merchant partners focused on catering. Often, delivery partners have to go into the office and set everything up, which is a different level of service. Being able to offer Blacklane and ezCater to our Uber for Business audience is a huge advantage, and I think we now have half of the Fortune 500 as customers. So these are mature businesses where we can introduce different capabilities to the enterprise audience and integrate more closely with them. The third category is new products that can grow with our audience. Spot Hero is an example. We want our products to be more relevant to commuters, and commuting is one of our largest categories. Being able to offer commuters an Uber to Work pass to avoid surge pricing, and parking spots when they want to drive themselves, is a great example for us of building a service inventory for commuters, a top customer segment. So these are the themes we pursue. We are very excited about the acquisitions on the books. We are very excited about ezCater, and overall as standalone businesses they are operating above our deal assumptions, and now we want to make sure integration is in place and teams are well treated. If all goes well, that is why next year I think the focus will be more on organic growth, autonomous driving, and then opportunistic share repurchases. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): I would add one point, from a process perspective, for any deal you see us do, we are always evaluating the "buy" logic of the deal. We are also comparing the accretion math to what it would look like if we simply bought back our own stock. In this specific case, since you asked specifically about ezCater, the build-versus-buy math is obvious. We are talking about acquiring a business that is already profitable today, and we have more synergies to come. Relative to building the business ourselves, we expect the build option would be several hundred million dollars less profitable. So I think we feel very good about the logic and are now focused on execution. Michael Morton, MoffettNathanson analyst: opportunities and risks from a DoorDash-Instacart merger Q: Good morning, thanks for the question. I want to talk about the potential DoorDash and Instacart merger. Uber Technologies, Inc. has talked several times about the cross-platform experience from Uber Eats to mobility. So I wanted to know if you could talk about the opportunities or risks this merger might create. Thank you. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Okay, sure. Honestly, Michael, I don't think it would affect us much. Our grocery and retail business is growing, at a US$15 billion annualized run rate, up 40%. Our focus is really on continuing to improve the product, which still has a lot of room for improvement in selection, quality, on-time rates, out-of-stock rates and so on. When we talk to merchant partners, they want choice, they want to grow direct channels, and they want many partners, including us, DoorDash and Instacart, to work with. So this potential deal removes one partner from the table, and we have already received proactive outreach from partners who are very concerned about the potential deal and asking what we think; second, they actually want to work with us more, want to build business with us, so that if DoorDash and Instacart merge, they are not overly dependent on a single platform that would account for a very large share of the online market. But from our perspective, the potential of this market is US$10 trillion, and this would create a competitor with a large share of the online market. But we think, for Uber Technologies, Inc., we will continue to invest. This kind of acquisition creates a lot of distraction. The merchant outreach we are receiving now is from merchants who want to bind more deeply with us and build business with us, so they have an alternative. As for whether one alternative or two alternatives is better, that is for the government to decide. Ken Gawrelski, Wells Fargo & Company analyst: U.S. mobility trends and delivery's organic acceleration Q: Thank you. If I could, I want to ask two questions. First, can you talk about U.S. domestic mobility trends, what you saw in the third quarter, and you mentioned mobility growth improving. I want to see if you can talk a little about the U.S. versus the international markets you mentioned earlier. In particular, the market is focused on the ongoing situation in California, and even some Texas markets with higher autonomous penetration. Second, you talked about delivery's organic growth accelerating, can you talk about the drivers in restaurant and grocery respectively? Are you seeing the core restaurant business also accelerating within overall organic acceleration? Thank you very much. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): Okay, thanks Ken. On U.S. mobility, we are seeing relatively resilient growth in the U.S., compared with the international trends we talked about earlier in the call. Growth slowed somewhat in the third quarter, but not as severely as in international markets. Global gasoline prices rising is an issue, and we are also seeing some supply pressure in the U.S., but we are responding with the targeted supply investments we discussed earlier. I think beyond the supply issue, what we continue to see in the U.S. is a growing insurance tailwind. We talked about a marked acceleration in trip growth in California, which continues to outperform the rest of the country. Second, our barbell strategy on product continues to be very healthy in the U.S. U.S. barbell products grew at 3x the overall business in the third quarter, with DRIVE coming from strong innovation around growth, including Wait and Save, Comfort, Reserve, Black, as well as teen and women-preferred products aimed at new customer groups, creating more choice for our customer base. Finally, from a sparse-market perspective, we see too much growth room in the U.S. In sparse markets, fewer than 10% of eligible consumers have used Uber Technologies, Inc. in the past 12 months, versus 50% in dense markets. So we continue to improve supply and reliability in these markets, which should have a very clear long-term impact. Dara, do you want to take the second one? A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Okay. We are quite pleased with U.S. delivery, which is accelerating well, the second consecutive quarter of acceleration in both organic delivery and U.S. delivery. There are many reasons. First, mathematically, our grocery retail business and first-party business are growing faster than the restaurant delivery business and are becoming a larger part of the mix, so a larger, faster-growing part is getting larger. Our core restaurant business is also accelerating, really because of merchant selection; our U.S. merchant count grew about 12% year over year. As we add more selection, everything helps conversion rise, and we also get new customers online. Membership is definitely a tailwind for us, with members now accounting for 70% of total delivery bookings, and members are deepening engagement with consumers. And of course, sparse markets. As Balaji said, sparse markets are a strategy we execute globally, but it is definitely also a strategy we execute for delivery in the U.S. That helps. Last but not least, transactions. We focus on merchant-funded promotions, in addition to the member discounts we give consumers. If you look at our advertising business and merchant-funded promotions, they grew by more than US$10 billion year over year. That is money we give consumers, and the return for merchants is new consumers and higher penetration in the market. So all of this is working right now. If there is one issue, it is that, like mobility, we continue to invest in delivery and couriers to ensure courier growth keeps pace with the consumer demand we see in food. That is currently our biggest challenge. But we think the team is fully capable of handling it. Mark Mahaney, Evercore analyst: sustainability of mobility segment margins Q: Hey, I just want to ask one question about mobility segment profitability, which was an 8% margin last quarter. As you roll out supply programs in international markets, does that mean you can maintain the current profitability? Or will there be a detour? Is this structural, or a temporary detour? Or will there be a detour on margins? Thank you. A (Balaji Krishnamurthy): Okay, Mark. I think I will go back to our consistent philosophy, which is that we want to drive margin expansion for the company overall year over year. Ideally, we want to do the same for each segment. But on a quarterly basis, there is some volatility in the business, whether from the supply investments we typically make during periods such as the holiday season. So I would not. I would not point to any material change in the segment's margin trajectory, and we will provide some color on the impact of fourth-quarter mobility supply investment on take rate, but from a margin perspective, not necessarily a material change. Look, I think the last point on profitability is to look at our outlook. We delivered a quarter of mid-30% EPS growth, and the fourth-quarter outlook we just provided has a midpoint of 37% non-GAAP EPS growth year over year. So if you look at it, you see profit growth expanding, which puts us in a pretty good position for 2027. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Mark, one more point so you understand the supply and demand situation. We have base pricing for consumer pricing and base pricing for driver and courier pay. Then we have incentives. There are rider incentives, driver incentives, eater incentives and courier incentives. This is more flexible money that we use for specific times, such as Halloween, to make sure drivers show up; or for specific locations, if we think there is a ballgame, we will provide driver incentives to get them to the ballgame at the right time. But what is cool is that we are simply rebalancing incentives between riders and drivers, for example in this case. Last year more incentives went to riders to lower prices; this year we are lowering rider incentives and using that money to fund driver incentives. That does mean sometimes prices are higher for riders, which is something we watch. We weigh profitability, but this is what we manage. There is a flexible incentive pool that we allocate to supply or demand based on marketplace balance, and that is part of the art we master. Then there is a lot of science, algorithmic science, such as if you have one dollar, what is the maximum predicted return on that dollar? Should I give that dollar to a driver in Brazil, or to a rider in India? The algorithms are making these choices, and they are structurally able to make them based on training on billions of trips, and can allocate these investments in ways humans cannot. Doug Anmuth, JPMorgan analyst: direct-connect strategy for AI agents and third-party distribution Q: Thank you very much for the question. I hope to learn your latest thinking on AI agents. Can you talk about some of the goals and differentiation you can provide by building agent technology directly within the Uber Technologies, Inc. platform? And then how do you think about the opportunity on third-party platforms like Mistral? Thank you. A (Dara Khosrowshahi): Okay, sure. I think the focus is on making sure we invest in providing the best experience through direct connect. Price, delivery time, reliability, selection. Obviously, we have membership benefits, and members now account for more than 50% of our bookings. This is simply about building the best experience through direct connect. We are indeed focused on making sure the direct-connect app experience is already frictionless. So the average trip ordering time is less than a minute, actually 50 seconds, which is the time people spend on our app, and 75% of our trips are based on personalized one-click, based on your destination and the data we have. If you look at the median time for eaters to reorder their favorite food, it is only 90 seconds. So we make sure accessing Uber Technologies, Inc. does not require a lot of cumbersome steps; you can come in and get out. Because of the data we have, where you are going, when you are going there and so on, we think a large number of people will come directly to our platform. Listen, I used to work in the travel industry, and we relied on Alphabet Inc. Class C's world, and I do not want to go back there. So truly best-in-class marketplace technology, the operational execution we are building, I think will make more and more people come directly to us. We are building our own AI experiences. For example, we have a cart assistant, which we are very excited about; early signals show baskets built with the cart assistant are about twice the average basket, and we are also working on various assistants, driver assistants and so on, to make sure on the AI side we have the best AI systems that let you get in and out of our service very quickly. That said, we will have discussions with third-party AI agents. We think this is another opportunity to reach our platform, and we think it will be a net positive for ecosystem demand. You can guess from our service that every AI system company is talking to us, and we are really negotiating deal terms now. The good news is that in most markets, you have two big mobility providers and two big delivery providers. I think I have counted eight different assistants now, and I think it will be more than