Uber is bouncing back from the pandemic faster than Lyft

Uber had a successful first quarter of 2022 by some measures, as it more than doubled its revenue year-over-year to $6.85 billion. Increased demand for rides following the Omicron surge played a role, as did higher ride prices due to a shortage of drivers.

The company reported that riders took 1.71 billion trips last quarter, an increase of 18 percent from the first three months of 2021. Gross bookings (the total amount Uber receives from customers) for rides increased by 58 percent year over year to $10.7 billion. Delivery gross bookings rose by 12 percent to $13.9 billion. Uber’s revenue from rides was $2.52 billion. From deliveries, it earned $2.51 billion in revenue.

However, Uber’s net loss increased from $108 million in Q1 2021 to $5.93 billion last quarter. That’s largely due to its equity investments in Didi, Grab Holdings and Aurora Innovation. Still, Uber believes it will be cash-flow positive on a full-year basis for 2022.

Growth is expected to continue this quarter. Uber claims the value of rides booked in April surpassed 2019 levels, for one thing. The company also noted that rider wait times and surge trips were at their best levels for a year.

Uber says that many drivers have opted to move over to Eats deliveries. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company won’t have to make “significant incremental incentive investments” to keep drivers on the platform and persuade new and lapsed drivers to get behind the wheel. The same can’t be said for rival Lyft.

That company expects it will need to spend more to entice drivers to return or join its platform. It’s taking longer than expected for its driver base to return to pre-pandemic levels, Lyft president John Zimmer told Reuters. Uber has a leg up on Lyft in this regard, since its drivers can choose to deliver food and other items instead of ferrying passengers around. However, Lyft didn’t provide more details of how much it will spend on driver incentives.

Lyft earned revenue of $875.6 million for the first quarter, a year-over-year increase of 44 percent. It had a net loss of $196.9 million, down significantly from the $427.3 million net loss it posted a year earlier. Its active number of riders rose to 17.8 million from 13.5 million in Q1 2021.

Rivian will receive up to $1.5 billion in state incentives to build Georgia production facility

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Apple had a huge quarter, but revenue growth is slowing

All eyes are on Apple today, after a tumultuous series of earnings reports dropped this week. Google parent company Alphabet missed revenue expectations, while Meta (formerly Facebook) recorded a higher profit than expected this quarter. Apple just released its results and the company has performed respectably in its second quarter of the fiscal year 2022. This was its best March quarter yet, with revenues of $97.3 billion — a 9 percent jump from the same period last year. On today’s earnings call, CEO Tim Cook said the results were “better than we anticipated.” That said, it’s still a drop from its results last quarter, where it broke all-time records with revenues of $123.9 billion. 

Apple also hit a new all-time high on its revenue from Services, which includes things like subscriptions to TV+, Music and Fitness+. With its strong showing on the awards circuit recently, it’s hardly a surprise that TV+ is drawing in subscribers. Apple doesn’t break down how much it makes specifically from each individual service, so it’s hard to say just how much impact shows like Coda or Ted Lasso have had. Notably, Coda‘s winning of Best Picture at the Academy Awards makes Apple TV the first streaming service to win in that category.

The rest of the company’s products continued to do well too, with revenues from Mac, iPhone and “Wearables, Home and Accessories” all having increased year over year. On the call, Cook highlighted the new Mac Studio and Studio Display that were launched in March, as well as the iPhone SE and the M1-powered iPad Air. CFO Luca Maestri also said on the earnings call that the last seven quarters have been “the best seven quarters ever for Mac.” Interestingly, the one segment that faltered was iPad, raking in about $7.6 billion compared to around $7.8 billion the same time last year. That type of up-and-down performance is pretty typical for iPads, though. 

The wearables category was the most eye-catching, with Apple making $19.8 billion this quarter from sales of things like AirPods and watches, compared to $16.9 billion this time last year. That’s more than it made from Macs, which came in at $10.4 billion this quarter (up from $9.1 billion last year). Maestri said on the call that “our wearables business has doubled in three years and is nearly the size of a Fortune 100 business.” If you’re keeping track, that means the Services category made Apple almost twice as much money as Macs, which is the next closest category (aside from iPhones, which came in at about $50.5 billion).

Apple Studio Display
Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

Maestri attributed some of the Services earnings to a few things. The company’s “install base has continued to grow, reaching an all-time high across each geographic segment,” he said. Paid subscriptions also increased, with more than 825 million paying subscribers across the services on Apple now. Of that number, 165 million signed up in the last 12 months, Maestri added later in the call.

Global supply constraints were a big point of focus on the question-and-answer portion of the call, and when asked about the long lead time on Mac products, Cook cited COVID-related disruptions in China and the ongoing silicon shortage as contributing to the issue. “We’re not really forecasting when we can be out of the silicon shortage,” he said, adding “I think the COVID piece of it — I hope it is a transitory kind of issue and so I would hope that it would get better over time.”

Activision Blizzard shareholders approve Microsoft’s $68.7 billion takeover bid

Activision Blizzard’s shareholders have overwhelmingly voted in favor of a proposed $68.7 billion takeover by Microsoft. More than 98 percent of the shares that voted at a special meeting held on Thursday approved of the merger.

Though the company called the vote non-binding and advisory, the deal could not have moved forward without the majority of shareholders giving it the green light. The board of directors unanimously agreed it was in the best interest of Activision Blizzard and its shareholders, and recommended they vote in favor.

The planned merger is not finalized and it could still collapse. The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing the deal and is expected to closely scrutinize the details. Under chair Lina Khan, the FTC has put the kibosh on NVIDIA’s attempt to buy ARM and revived an antitrust case against Meta over its purchases of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard will also need regulatory approval from the UK, the European Union, China and some other jurisdictions, according to an SEC filing. The companies expect the deal to close by June 2023.

There are other considerations that may impact the planned Activision Blizzard-Microsoft merger beyond antitrust concerns. The embattled game publisher has been the subject of lawsuits and accusations alleging workplace harassment and discrimination. Meanwhile, some quality assurance workers at Activision studio Raven Software are holding a union election over the next few weeks.