Ben Gilbert: recommendation

Transcript context

…It is. We are a supply-led business at this point. Probably two years ago, we could have added 25% more drivers and couriers into the platform that would all be super busy instantly. Right now, our supply generally is growing faster than demand because it's catching up to demand. The average driver who's on the platform is working more because experience is better, earnings levels are really good. This point probably supplies still trailing demand by 5% or so, but the marketplace is now getting to a point where it's balanced. It's that compounding that really starts working. I was reading through the most recent earnings, and you have a chart on average over the last five years or so. Drivers make more money per hour. If we entered some economic environment, where a whole bunch of people were out of work, and they wanted to become Uber drivers, but that would make it so that the average earnings across the whole platform would plunge because you have a whole ton of new drivers coming on, would you guys gate it and be like, hey, we want to make sure that we don't flood the supply side of the marketplace? No, because one of our core philosophies is this is an open platform. If your background check comes in okay, et cetera, then you can have access to earnings opportunities. That's a core belief for us. The economics take care of themselves. When you look at mid cycle, long cycle, if earnings come down on the platform, then it becomes a less attractive platform to drivers, and they will do something else. There is this counter cyclicality about our marketplace, which is during really good times, it becomes harder for us to recruit drivers, so the cost of supply goes up. While revenue and gross bookings are growing, unit volumes are strong, our supply base becomes more expensive. During softer economic times, you get more drivers coming into the platform, ETAs come down, prices come down, the price becomes cheaper. Actually, our unit volumes accelerate. If you look at our Q1 unit volumes, they grew 24% versus 19% in Q4. We accelerated trip growth, which is not something that you see at our scale, but it's some of this stuff working out.…

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