AP Photo/Richard Drew Uber executives celebrating the company's IPO in May at the New York Stock Exchange.
- Uber posted a $5.2 billion loss on Thursday, its largest ever, sending shares plummeting.
- A major chunk of that spending was on two things: stock-based compensation and driver rewards, both stemming from the company's IPO in May.
- Other major costs for Uber include research and development, on things like self-driving cars, and sales and marketing, in order to keep growing.
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Uber lost a whopping $5.2 billion in the second quarter of 2019, the company revealed Thursday, its deepest quarterly loss ever thanks to an expensive initial public offering earlier this year
It's a tremendous amount of money for any company, though a major chunk was thanks to one-off expenses, and is set to decline in coming periods, the company said. Still, investors weren't happy with the results, and the stock plunged as much as 8% when markets opened Friday morning.
"The big picture is we want to be there any way you want to get around your city and I think we're well on a path to do so in a profitable way," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts on a conference call following the results.
Most Wall Street analysts viewed the quarter as in-line with what they expected, even as certain line items might have disappointed. Some even suggested the big selloff as a potential buy-the-dip opportunity
"We see Uber shares as one of the best long-term stories in the Internet and would take advantage of the weakness to add to positions," Lloyd Walmsley, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, told clients. "We think a continued improvement in unit economics and better visibility into the path to profitability could draw more investors to do the work, and given compelling potential upside in a bull case, near term and long term, we would not wait to get involved."
Here's where Uber's massive amounts of cash went during the three-month period ending June 31:
