UBER has strong fundamentals and low valuation but faces uncertain impact from autonomous vehicles; speaker sees value but lacks conviction for permanent ownership.

Uber stock has been absolutely crushed, down almost 31% from its high. Uber's own CEO walked into the market and bought $10 million of Uber stock with his own money. 6 days before that, another top executive bought 5.3 million.

And some of the biggest investors on Wall Street have been piling in as well. Are robo taxis about to destroy Uber? Or will they turn it into one of the biggest winners of the entire self-driving revolution?

A year ago, Uber hit a high of about $102 a share. Today, it's down to around $70 per share.

Last quarter, the total value of everything booked on Uber, rides, food, groceries, grew 22%. Trips were up 18%. It now has 28 million people using it every single month.

And for the very first time ever, Uber generated over $10 billion in free cash flow over the past year, capping off four straight quarters of 20% plus growth.

Guys, this is a fast growing cashgushing machine. Its profit forecast for this quarter came in a touch lower than expected. It announced plans to spend a massive over $10 billion on self-driving cars.

It's making a giant overseas acquisition and it just cut about 10% of its staff in order to get leaner.

In fact, the stock dropped almost 5% right after its latest earnings, mostly on the lighter profit outlook and the huge self-driving spending plan.

So, here's the key takeaway. Uber's falling stock and Uber's booming business are two completely different stories right now. The real debate isn't whether Uber is growing. It clearly is.

It's what Uber looks like in a world full of robo taxis.

While the stock was falling, the people who know Uber the best were buying. As I mentioned, on September 10th, the CEO of Uber bought 141,000 shares with his own cash in a real open market purchase.

It wasn't a stock bonus. It wasn't options. He actually reached into his own pocket. Days earlier, Uber's president bought big as well.

Now, insider buying doesn't guarantee anything. But when the top bosses buy this much of their own company with their own cash, it has to make you wonder. It can mean that they think the stock is cheap.

Bill Aman added to an already giant position. David Ter added over 20% and star investor Terry Smith opened a brand new position.

But let's walk through the bull and bear cases. So what am I going to do? I'm going to pull up Uber in our great software. This is the market. This is the price of the company 144 billion.

It's not the stock price. It is the stock price multiply the number of shares. That's the true price of the business. And the enterprise value here is $176 billion. This difference of 33 billion is essentially their debt.

But guys, as we said, they generated over 10 billion in free cash flow.

The marketplace continues to compound. So guys, everybody's worried about Uber. 16.7% year-over-year revenue growth. And why? Mobility, delivery, and freight. They have Uber Eats.

They have the Uber freight. They have the regular Uber. These things are all working together to grow revenue.

Two, free cash flow growth is very meaningful. We just saw this 10 billion last year, 5.17 a year for the last 5 years. Big- time growth in their free cash flow.

They're only selling for 14.3 times free cash flow, which is mentioned right here. That's incredible. Third one, autonomous vehicles could expand margins and strategic importance.

Now, this is the big one, guys. A lot of people think that self-driving cars might bury Uber. This bullcase is saying no, it'll just make Uber even more profitable because they don't have to sit there and pay the drivers and worry about the hassles with that.

First one, the recent cash flow performance may overstate normalized economics. Uber's trillion free cash flow is substantially above its 5-year average. So the question is which one's more normal?

The 10 billion or the 5 billion? That's a legitimate question to ask. That's a lot of growth for a company that's been relatively mature.

Number two, competition and regulation can pressure the marketplace. Guys, there's Door Dash, there's GrubHub, there's Whimo, there's a lot of other there's Lyft. Now granted, I believe Uber is a leader, but if Uber doesn't get to the robo taxis and to compete with Whimo faster, it might be a problem for Uber.

And third, autonomous vehicles may create as much competition as opportunity. That's the obvious question here. That's a big reason why I believe Uber is selling at such a low valuation.

Now, there's one more thing to watch that doesn't fit neatly into a bull or bear case. Uber is trying to buy a huge overseas food delivery company called Delivery Hero for about $15 billion.

The logic makes sense. It instantly adds dozens of new countries, millions of customers, and tons of merchants. It's buying businesses across about 60 markets that did roughly 42 billion in bookings last year.

But it's risky because Uber is suddenly trying to do a lot all at once. Swallow this giant acquisition, spend $10 billion on robo taxis, expand groceries, build advertising, and reorganizing after big layoffs.

So, the fair question is, is Uber brilliantly widening its lead or biting off more than it can chew? We're going to run the stock analyzer the right way and see what it's truly worth based on my own assumptions.

here's an article in which the original CEO and founder Travis Kellanick said he saw autonomous ve, this is 10 years ago, autonomous vehicles as an existential threat to the ride company's business model.

What would happen if we weren't part of that future? If we weren't part of the autonomy thing, then the future passes us by.

So, this gives me, you know, comfort for an Uber as an Uber investor saying, "Hey, listen. 10 years ago, we weren't talking about self-driving cars like we are today, right? It wasn't a reality.

It's coming into reality now." And 10 years ago, the original founder and CEO was definitely on that forefront, which I like to see a lot of.

The current CEO said, "We think there are going to be many a vehicle autonomous vehicle players around the world, and we want to be the go-to commercial platform for all of them."

So, according to that, then that means, hey, we're not trying to make our own vehicles, which is the case, or our own software. What we're trying to do is say, if you have an autonomous vehicle, we'd love to be the one that you put your car on.

That's their kind of idea. Like, it doesn't matter what kind of car you have, put it on our platform. We will be the one to generate you money off that car.

Since then, the company has signed agreements with more than 25 major robo taxi players with driverless vehicles from Whimo, Nurero, BU, and Volkswagen either available or soon to be available on the Uber app in several global cities.

The company through its lobbyists have pressed lawmakers to deploy autonomous vehicles on what it calls hybrid networks where human drivers work alongside robots as the new tech grows.

Now, it gets even more updated. Now we're at 30 autonomous vehicle companies over the last two years they've made partnerships with.

Now when the previous CEO and founder had started he had said hey listen we're going to make autonomous vehicles. The new CEO came in scrapped that and said no we're going to partner with them.

And guys look at all the companies they're partnering with Aurora Autorains AOMO Avride BU Car Taken Coco and it keeps on going 30 of these companies down here. So, they're clearly serious about autonomous vehicle driving and they have to be because of what Travis had said.

If they're not on it, they're going to get passed by.

And of course, this is from investor relations early this year. Uber today announced February 23 of 2026. Uber today announced the launch of Uber Autonomous Solutions, a comprehensive suite of unique services and capabilities that are already helping partners to build and successfully commercialize autonomous vehicles in multiple markets around the world.

So guys, again Uber has the idea of we are Uber. Whenever you want to take a car now, you say, "Can I take an Uber?" I was in New York City last week. I went to Uber and got a taxi through Uber.

Isn't that incredible? I got a taxi through Uber.

Now, in fairness, I was at my hotel and my stepson was about ready to leave for the airport. He was looking for an Uber. The airport, the the hotel said, "Hey, we got a black Escalade for you for 150 bucks."

I said, "Well, look it up on Uber, guys. A black car was $275 and his regular normal Uber, which would have been like a Corolla or something like that, was 160." So, I saw that and thought to myself, "Huh, okay.

So, the hotel took care of him at a cheaper price." Okay, that was kind of like a interesting moment for me. But then again, they have people out front. The hotel has cars. They can probably offer it cheaper just to keep things moving and provide a better experience, which is a lot different than when I'm sitting on Fifth Avenue or somewhere shopping or coming from a show on Broadway and trying to get a car.

I can't just call my hotel and say, "Hey, send that Uber. Send that black lemon Escalade for me."

So guys, let's break it down. Let's take a look at Uber here and the numbers. So Uber is currently a $145 billion company. The market cap is the price $177 billion enterprise value.

We've talked about this. So there's $32 billion essentially in debt. That's the difference between market cap and enterprise value.

But guys, they generated 10 billion in free cash flow. As the question asking earlier, is this 10 billion the actual reliable number? We don't know because in the last 5 years their average was 5 billion.

Is the trend going up or is it too high coming back down?

Now guys, returns on capital aren't great. 3% a year for the last five years, but 9.7 last year. As their operating income goes up, that's their oper income from operations goes up, it's going to drive this return on capital higher, and that would be good indication of a moat type of business. The higher it goes.

Gross profits 42%. The revenue growth rate has slowed significantly because we all use Uber now. I mean, to get in new markets, how do you do that?

And it's selling, guys, for 14 1.5 times free cash flow and 15 times earnings. Now, guys, Uber is not on my list of 33 companies that own forever. But if I truly believe that they are in the forefront and they're going to be the leader of autonomous vehicles, it would be on my list.

I don't know if I'm willing to spend the time to figure that out versus wait for all the players to fall to the side, wait a few years to see if Uber is the one that does it.

But I will tell you this price of free cash flow. If you believe that Uber is just going to get better from here and they are going to be the even if it's the number two autonomous company, but they're going to keep on growing their cash flow, this seems to be like a very cheap price for the company.

So let's check out their eight pillars. And guys, even though selling for a low multiple, their shares outstanding are up 4% in the last 5 years. Their returns on capital for the last 5 years are low but getting better.

So this one's not so bad. The 5-year PE and 5-year price of free cash flow are still a little elevated, but again, those numbers are both much higher today in terms of their net income and free cash flow.

The other thing I want to see is let's see their shares outstanding. So, they are actually declining in their shares outstanding, but it's still higher than five years.

So, guys, I'm not going to lie to you, you could easily make the argument this is eight pillars easily because the current price of free cash flow and the current PE are 14 and 15.

Their shares are actually down the last three years, not the last five. And their returns on capital are over 9% last year. So if you extrapolate this out, this is how the numbers change quite a bit.

Now guys, before we find out what price we're going to pay for this company, let's take a look at analyst estimates because analysts seem pretty optimistic about the future. 335 per share growing to 696 over the next four years.

That's over double for the next four years. And revenue growth 11%, 15, 13, 11, and 10%. So still double-digit growth here. There's still a lot of room for growth for this company.

So, guys, I'm doing a 10-year analysis on Uber. First thing, what are my revenue growth assumptions for the next 10 years? Well, I decided 5, 8, 11% revenue growth per year for my low, middle, and high assumptions.

Profit margin, and free cash flow. I did 14, 18, and 22. Now, guys, they did basically 18 in the last year. If this gets better, trends in the same direction it's been going, this might be a low number, but I'm good with that right now.

Next, what is the PE? What is the price to free cash flow that I would assign to this company 10 years from now? Now, 10 years from now, autonomous vehicles will probably be very a lot more mainstream.

Will they be a leader in it? Will they not? I'm going to assume they're going to keep on doing better. So, I'm going to assign them a better than average, better than S&P 500 long-term average.

I'm going to assign them 18, 22, and 26 times earnings and free cash flow 10 years from now.

Do you think Uber will be better and bigger 10 years from now? If so, I think you have to assign them a better PE than the historical average of 15 or 16. That's why I did 18, 22, and 26.

Low price of 72, high price of 233, middle price of 133. That means if our middle assumptions occur and I pay today's price, I can expect an 18.5% return on my money.

My desired return is 15%. So I hit the analyze button and guys this means that my low price is 50. My high price is 150. My middle price is 90. It's still selling below my middle value.

So for me, if I were to sit there and feel comfortable with autonomous vehicles and their and their track record going for it, it's a company that I should be looking at.

I would do what's calling sell what's called selling a cash secured put. So what I'm doing is I'm selling somebody the right to force me to buy Uber at a date in the future at a cheaper price.

The stock is currently at 71. Let's say I wound up for 65. What this means is somebody be willing to pay me 63 cents per share for the right to buy Uber at $65 on October 23rd.

That's going to give me an annualized 11% return on my money.

If Uber falls to flow $65 a share, I get to buy it. I keep my 63 cents and I get the shares I want at 65 bucks. Now, the catch is if it falls to 60, I still have to pay 65. If it falls to 50, I still have to pay 65.

Well, I keep my 63 cents and that's it. I keep 63 cents either way, but in this situation, if it's at 67 on October 23rd, I just keep my 63 cents and I don't get any additional shares.