Uber reports positive cash flow for the first time

The ride-hailing service has more drivers than ever before. Also: Hedge fund Elliott joins Paypal with billions, Instagram boss moves to London and layoffs at Robinhood.

Good morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.

The top topics:

Uber seems to be becoming more of a standard service for many. The US ride-hailing agency booked a positive cash flow for the first time in the past quarter: this amounted to 382 million US dollars, analysts had expected 263 million. The relaxing Covid restrictions worldwide were responsible for this. Many employees are now back in the office and the demand for transport services has increased. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (Ebitda) were $364 million, also well above estimates of $258 million. At the same time, the US company continued to post a high loss: the bottom line was a minus of $ 2.6 billion in the second quarter.

On a positive note, Uber doesn’t seem to have any trouble finding drivers. Above all, the increased cost of living seems to motivate many to generate additional income through the service. The outlook for the current quarter was also positive: the company expects adjusted Ebitda to be between 440 and 470 million dollars. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Wall Street Journal und CNBC]

on Founder Scene: When Elon Musk bans his employees from working remotely, it sparks heated debates. Working atmosphere and corporate culture are important for employee satisfaction. But for many applicants it is difficult to get an objective assessment of the culture in the respective company. The tool from the Berlin HR startup helps with this Empion. Steffen Bosse asked the founders exactly how this works. [Mehr bei Gründerszene+]

And here are the other headlines of the night:

Paypal‘s shares rose sharply in after-hours trading after hedge fund Elliott announced its entry into the online payments service. With an investment of over two billion US dollars, the company is now one of the major shareholders in PayPal. An increase in profit expectations for the full year also boosted the company’s shares. PayPal is assuming earnings per share of between $3.87 and $3.97. Earnings per share in the most recent quarter fell to $0.93 from $1.15 in the same period last year, but analysts had expected even less. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt]

InstagramCEO Adam Mosseri is relocating from San Francisco to London, at least temporarily. Behind this is the plan of the parent company Metauser of Tiktok to lure away. London is Meta’s largest engineering hub outside the US with more than 4000 employees including a dedicated Instagram product team as well as experts focused on developing services for developers. For example, the messaging app Workplace was developed here for the first time. Mosseri is now supposed to support the development team on site – the primary concern is that users should earn more money with their contributions in the future. [Mehr bei Financial Times]

Robinhood plans further redundancies: The number of employees is to be reduced by around 23 percent. This was announced by CEO Vlad Tenev on Tuesday. The fintech company blamed “a deteriorating macro environment” with inflation as well as the broad crypto market crash for the terminations. In April, Robinhood laid off around nine percent of its workforce. At the same time, the online broker announced its quarterly figures: Revenue rose from $299 million in the first quarter to $318 million in the second. However, that total was still well below the $565 million reported in the same period last year. The report also showed a decline in monthly active users and the assets Robinhood manages. [Mehr bei CNBC und The Information]

Airbnb has presented good quarterly figures: In the past quarter, sales increased by 58 percent to 2.1 billion US dollars. Earnings were $0.56 per share, equivalent to net income of $379 million. The latter was above analysts’ expectations. And there was still positive news: In the current quarter, the accommodation broker wants to achieve sales of between 2.78 and 2.88 billion dollars and thus exceed the previous forecast. Nevertheless, investors were disappointed – they had expected even greater demand for the summer months. [Mehr bei CNBC und Handelsblatt]

Investment: Shopify makes a foray into digital advertising. Canadian e-commerce software giant is investing $100 million in Boston-based marketing software company claviyo. Shopify also announced that it will make Klaviyo the recommended email marketing feature for its premium service Shopify Plus. Shopify acquired logistics startup Deliverr for $2.1 billion in May. [Mehr bei Techcrunch und The Information]

Our reading tip on the start-up scene: Priwatt sells solar systems with socket connection – ideal for the balcony. Demand has increased twenty-fold since the Ukraine war. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

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Happy Wednesday!

Your Gründerszene editors