Uber just got another turbo boost from BNP

Uber’s still the one to beat

Uber spent the week doing what public companies love most: making analysts look a little less skeptical. After better-than-expected first-quarter 2026 results and a stronger-than-expected second-quarter outlook, BNP Paribas’ Nick Jones kept his Outperform rating and slapped a $108 price target on the stock.

For context, Uber’s shares were trading around $79.90 in premarket action, so Jones is basically saying: this ride has more room to run.

The numbers weren’t subtle

Jones pointed to a pretty clean beat-and-raise setup:

• Gross bookings: $53.7 billion, ahead of expectations
• Revenue: $13.2 billion, roughly in line
• Adjusted EBITDA: $2.5 billion, above consensus
• Adjusted EPS: 72 cents, topping estimates
• Q2 guide: bookings of $56.25 billion to $57.75 billion, with EBITDA and EPS also above Street expectations

That combo matters because it suggests Uber isn’t just growing — it’s growing while keeping the profitability story alive. And in the market, that’s the difference between “nice app” and “show me the money.”

Why the bulls are still cruising

The analyst also leaned into the stuff that makes Uber feel more like a platform than a simple ride-hailing company:

• Mobility gross bookings rose about 25% year over year
• Delivery gross bookings climbed about 28%
• Uber One membership jumped more than 50% to 50 million users
• Cross-platform users are growing faster than single-segment customers

In other words: once people get into Uber’s ecosystem, they keep ordering the buffet, not just the appetizer.

The robotaxi elephant in the rearview mirror

Yes, autonomous vehicles are still the big “but what if this all changes?” question hanging over Uber. But Jones argued the company is leaning into that risk instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

Uber now offers autonomous rides in eight cities and plans to expand to as many as 15 globally by year-end. It’s also stacking partnerships with a who’s-who of AV and auto players, including Baidu, Lucid, Nissan, Rivian, Pony AI, NVIDIA, Hertz, Wayve, Waabi, Zoox, Motional, and Verne.

The takeaway? Uber doesn’t seem interested in getting disintermediated by robot cars. It wants to be the platform they all still need.

Big picture: the market keeps trying to decide whether Uber is a transportation app, a delivery company, or an AI-enabled logistics network. The answer, annoyingly for the bears, may be “all of the above.”