Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Okay, shares of lifted down around fifteen percent, on track
Speaker 2: for the biggest drop since August of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: This stock's under pressure, but in the company's earnings, the
Speaker 2: company kind of set out on working on a global
Speaker 2: expansion and new product offerings.
Speaker 1: Lift.
Speaker 2: CEO David Risher is here with us in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: I want to go to the core business because you know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to get to Roba Taxi shortly. But you know,
Speaker 2: like the things that are good for you are black
Speaker 2: Chaufford rides, airports, those are higher value and so like
Speaker 2: my interpretation of reading all the analyst response at least
Speaker 2: is that they looked at the kind of profit outlook
Speaker 2: and said, that's a bit below what we expected. What
Speaker 2: were the factors behind that? If those kind of high
Speaker 2: value segments are doing great.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's such a good question, right, Look, we
Speaker 3: had a blowout quarter, so record bookings, accelerating, record profits,
Speaker 3: never been higher, record cash flow, record customers. Okay, So
Speaker 3: all that is really good, and what it shows is
Speaker 3: the customer obsession is what drives profitable growth.
Speaker 1: Now there's no question it sounds.
Speaker 3: Like analysts are looking at things like margin, But as
Speaker 3: you just pointed out, a lot of our biggest growth
Speaker 3: is actually in the highest value mode, it's highest margin modes.
Speaker 3: So we've got a lot of conviction that we're in
Speaker 3: a good place and only getting better.
Speaker 2: You and I spent some time together at the end
Speaker 2: of last year and we went kind of a bit
Speaker 2: deeper on the robotape plan. Yeah, it's through partnerships and
Speaker 2: it's leveraging what you believe is a strength in fleet management.
Speaker 2: That's right, succinctly update us on everything that's due to happen.
Speaker 1: Then please, oh my good.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is gonna be a big year for
Speaker 3: self driving cars, right, and let's start with sort of
Speaker 3: the big picture. When self driving cars come on to
Speaker 3: a network like cars, it tends to expand the market.
Speaker 3: And you would expect that because it's a cool new product.
Speaker 3: It's reliable. You know, you can kind of space out,
Speaker 3: you can text and not worry about a driver or
Speaker 3: over hearing a phone call something like that.
Speaker 1: So that's really good.
Speaker 3: Okay, So then what happens is you've got to make
Speaker 3: sure that you're well positioned with all the best players
Speaker 3: in the market if you're on in our in our business,
Speaker 3: we are. We've got way more partnership as you know.
Speaker 3: We've got a buy Do partner that we've just announced
Speaker 3: is going to be live in London later this year.
Speaker 3: We just worked out an agreement with the city of
Speaker 3: Hamburg in Germany to be the first robotaxi provider there.
Speaker 3: So that's wonderful. So you've got the partnerships, you've got
Speaker 3: the cities lined up, and now you've got to be
Speaker 3: able to manage this fleet. And as you just said,
Speaker 3: this is not the sexy part, but it's so important.
Speaker 3: You've got to be able to make sure these cars
Speaker 3: are charged, clean and ready to go. We have a
Speaker 3: flex Drive subsidiary that's been doing that for years.
Speaker 1: We think we're the.
Speaker 3: Best in class, and our goal is to be maybe
Speaker 3: five percent cheaper than any other place with higher quality,
Speaker 3: to put robo taxes on the network.
Speaker 4: Cheaper that doesn't immediately make me think profit driving David
Speaker 4: in that way, And so like talk about your targets.
Speaker 4: You've got this one billion EMIT deal by twenty twenty seven,
Speaker 4: and Lumberg Intelligence is warring.
Speaker 1: That looks pretty ambitious at this stage.
Speaker 3: Well, so when I say cheaper, I mean the lowest
Speaker 3: cost way right. And that's the thing is, I want
Speaker 3: our cost position to be really good. To your point,
Speaker 3: like our goals which we set out a couple of
Speaker 3: years ago. Our top line growth of twenty of fifteen
Speaker 3: percent mid teens year on year, much on track for that,
Speaker 3: and bottom line growth getting to a billion dollars of
Speaker 3: adjusted EBITDAT which will be four percent margin.
Speaker 1: Very much on track for that.
Speaker 3: But what it means is you've got to be really
Speaker 3: smart about managing your costs. You've got really good about
Speaker 3: kind of managing your quality, and we're doing really well
Speaker 3: on both. We've just made progress. As I say, we've
Speaker 3: got our best profitable, highest profitable quarter.
Speaker 4: Just this pass you for I think, therefore, go back
Speaker 4: to the av world because there is this ongoing anxiety
Speaker 4: that the competition is just going to get so fierce.
Speaker 1: Are you set up to win?
Speaker 4: What are you saying to convince the investor base they
Speaker 4: shouldn't be setting off your shares like this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that the way to think about avs
Speaker 3: is they're going to be good for the whole industry,
Speaker 3: the ride share industry, because as they say, it's a
Speaker 3: good new product at a lower cost. And I think
Speaker 3: why we are particularly well positioned is we have demand
Speaker 3: that runs to the two three four million people a
Speaker 3: day level, So we have lots of demand for this,
Speaker 3: and you know what they want. They want a fast,
Speaker 3: reliable pick up. It's going to get them where they
Speaker 3: want to go. Sometimes they'll want to be driven by
Speaker 3: a human, sometimes by a robot. Just kind of depends.
Speaker 3: And so this idea of a hybrid network, I think
Speaker 3: it's a real strength, particularly when you sort of marry
Speaker 3: it with fleet.
Speaker 2: Is there a case study for you to reflect on
Speaker 2: in real terms?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: Like Atlanta, mame mobility? What are you learning there?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: And by the way, what's the status of it in
Speaker 2: terms of like fully driver lists, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: So we're in Atlanta, have we still have safety drivers
Speaker 3: in the car just to make sure everything is going well,
Speaker 3: and you know, because we want this to be an
Speaker 3: incredibly high quality, incredibly safe experience.
Speaker 1: What we're learning is people love it. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the interesting thing.
Speaker 3: People before they when they hear about av's are often
Speaker 3: a little skeptical. They sound like, I'm not sure I'm
Speaker 3: going to be excited about taking a car that's driven
Speaker 3: by a robot. You know, five minutes later they've kind
Speaker 3: of fallen in love.
Speaker 1: And that cialization is highlight. What's the metric? Yeah, super high,
Speaker 1: super high.
Speaker 3: Basically, I mean as much supply as we can get
Speaker 3: we can put on the road, because there's plenty of
Speaker 3: demand for these things. I think if you want to
Speaker 3: look at a case study for broadly speaking, maybe look
Speaker 3: at the transition from DVDs to streaming. Right, it's a
Speaker 3: similar sort of technology shift. And look how big streaming
Speaker 3: is today compared to DVDs in the past.
Speaker 1: It's going to be that kind of wave, Stevin. You
Speaker 1: know what else?
Speaker 4: I love a lot of New Yorkers love the bikes,
Speaker 4: and boy has this snow made things really difficult. Hate
Speaker 4: to get personal hit, but I mean, look at these pictures.
Speaker 4: I am really struggling to get my bike out. I'm
Speaker 4: really struggling to get it back in. How much of
Speaker 4: a hit is this to have to refund customers? How
Speaker 4: much are you thinking about what the city and you
Speaker 4: can work together with to make this a really costly
Speaker 4: business for you in these sorts of temperatures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, this has been a big big
Speaker 3: learning for us. Obviously there's a huge snowstorm. I'm told
Speaker 3: that we're about seventy five percent dugout right now, which
Speaker 3: is amazing, but that takes a lot of work, a
Speaker 3: lot of just physical labor to make sure that the
Speaker 3: bag stations are available. I think people have taken something
Speaker 3: like half a million rides in the last couple of days,
Speaker 3: which is pretty amazing considering the cold and the snow. Anyway,
Speaker 3: working super closely with the city on it, really making
Speaker 3: sure that the availability of these bikes, which, as you say,
Speaker 3: we run behind the scenes asig as we can get it.
Speaker 2: I asked Bloomberg Tech producer Justin Now to pop his
Speaker 2: head out the window and check, because like here in
Speaker 2: the bay, obviously we don't get confronted by snow. But
Speaker 2: you know, I went back and read my history about
Speaker 2: the kind of micro mobility part of the business. It
Speaker 2: is a smaller part on revenue spasis, but clearly it's
Speaker 2: still important to you.
Speaker 1: It is how important?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, as you say, financially it's relatively small,
Speaker 3: but this is the future.
Speaker 1: Look, when you talk about avs, that's part of the future.
Speaker 1: When you talk about micromobility, people.
Speaker 3: Once people get on an e bikes, I say this
Speaker 3: sometimes it's kind of like meeting a person who's just
Speaker 3: started pickleball, Like they have to tell you about it,
Speaker 3: how amazing this thing is. Same with e bikes, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. So it's like, so this is
Speaker 3: sometimes you can see the future and if you look
Speaker 3: out three, five, ten years, you're going to see more
Speaker 3: people on e bikes. You're going to see more people
Speaker 3: in self driving cars, and you know, and of course
Speaker 3: you're also going to see people in human driven cars,
Speaker 3: and that's what we're building.