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Uber announced it reached a record revenue last year, overcoming the economic downturn many companies have faced in recent months. The company released its report announcing the results from its fourth quarter and for all of 2022, saying its revenue grew by 49% between 2021 and last year.
The net income came in at $595 million over the year, bringing in a reported revenue of $8.6 billion in just the final three months of last year. The company also announced that the number of gross bookings increased from 12% in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 17.7% in the fourth quarter of 2022.
“We ended 2022 with our strongest quarter ever, with robust demand and record margins,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in the report. “Our global scale and unique platform advantages position us well to accelerate this momentum into 2023.”
In the last quarter of 2022, Uber reached 131 million consumers and carried out 2.1 billion trips, up from 1.7 billion trips from the year prior. The company also said it launched a single cross-platform membership program called Uber One in five countries last year, including Chile, France, Japan, Spain, and Taiwan, making the program available in a total of 12 countries.
The company says in the report that it expects the platform to continue to grow in 2023 and Khosrowshahi said at the World Economic Forum last month that he does not anticipate any companywide layoffs, Reuters reported.
Uber did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Despite Uber reaching record revenue, a week after the forum, the company laid off 150 employees from Uber Freight, amounting to 3% of its workforce. Uber Freight is a service that provides advanced booking for pick-up and deliveries. Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron said in a message obtained by CNBC that they were the first layoffs since the early weeks of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
However, the number of layoffs at Uber has remained far lower than its competitors such as Lyft which laid off 650 employees in November and discontinued its Lyft Delivery service, The New York Times reported.
“In 2022, we significantly exceeded our profitability outlook, with an incremental margin of 10%,” CFO Nelson Chai, said in Uber’s end-of-year report. “Our outlook for a Gross Bookings and Adjusted EBITDA step up in Q1 builds on that progress, and sets us up for yet another record year.”