Uber CEO Khosrowshahi Got $43.5M in Total 2018 Pay, Says IPO Filing
Uber's hiring away from Expedia of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in September 2017 put it on “a new path forward,” after “many challenges regarding our culture, workplace practices, and reputation,” said an initial public offering filing Thursday at the SEC to raise $1 billion (see 1904110072). Uber paid Khosrowshahi $45.3 million in total 2018 compensation, including $40 million in stock awards, $1 million in base salary, a $2 million cash bonus and $2.2 million in other pay, said the IPO.
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Leadership under Khosrowshahi's watch “has sought to reform our culture fundamentally,” said the filing. It’s “creating and embracing new cultural norms, committing to diversity and inclusion, and rebuilding our relationships with employees, Drivers, consumers, cities, and regulators,” it said. The team thinks going public “will further enhance our transparency with shareholders, regulators, and government officials,” it said.
The filing capitalized “Drivers” throughout, and said 3.9 million of them took Uber's 91 million “monthly active platform consumers" (MAPCs) on 1.5 billion trips globally in Q4. Drivers earned more than $78.2 billion 2015 to 2018, plus $1.2 billion in tips since in-app tipping was introduced in July 2017.
The company draws "substantially all" its revenue from the fees drivers and restaurants pay to use the platform for Uber ridesharing and Uber Eats, said the filing. Uber had a $997 million net profit last year on revenue of $11.27 billion, it said. "As Drivers are our customers, Driver incentives are recorded as a reduction of revenue if we do not receive a distinct service or cannot reasonably estimate the fair value of the service received," it said.
The new Uber values “ideas over hierarchy,” said the IPO. “Our job is to seek out those ideas, to shape and improve them through candid debate, and to take them from concept to action.” Acting on driver feedback, the Uber Pro rewards program was launched in November, and it’s running in beta mode in eight U.S. cities, it said. “We expect Uber Pro to provide Drivers with the opportunity to increase their earnings, receive discounts on vehicle maintenance and gas” and get full tuition reimbursement for undergraduate degrees or non-degree certificates through Arizona State University Online, it said.
Gross bookings from Uber ridesharing services grew 121 percent to $41.5 billion in 2018 from $18.8 billion in 2016, said the IPO document. Uber’s “category position” declined in “recent periods,” such as in 2017 when Uber “was significantly impacted by adverse publicity events,” it said.
The company was rocked that year by sexual-harassment scandal and PR nightmares, including when former CEO Travis Kalanick was caught on camera yelling profanities at his own Uber driver, who had complained to his boss that Uber’s discount-pricing policies were driving him into bankruptcy. Kalanick, who resigned in June 2017, still owns 8.6 percent of Uber stock. That's second only to Benchmark General Partner Matt Cohler among top individual shareholders.
An Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) within Uber is developing autonomous vehicles, delivery drones and "vertical takeoff and landing vehicles," plus "other future innovations," said the IPO. ATG, based in Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto, has more than 1,000 employees and has built more than 250 self-driving prototype vehicles, it said. It also has collected data from "millions of autonomous vehicle testing miles, and completed tens of thousands of passenger trips,” it said.
Uber foresees “a long period of hybrid autonomy, in which autonomous vehicles will be deployed gradually against specific use cases while Drivers continue to serve most consumer demand,” said the filing. "Deciding which trip receives a vehicle driven by a Driver and which receives an autonomous vehicle, and deploying both in real time while maintaining liquidity in all situations, is a dynamic that we believe is imperative for the success of an autonomous vehicle future."
Uber Eats, in the three years since its creation, “has grown to be the largest meal delivery platform in the world,” outside China, based on its $7.9 billion in 2018 gross bookings, said the filing. “We believe that our scale enables the average delivery time for Uber Eats to be faster than the average delivery time for our competitors.” The average Uber Eats delivery time in Q4 was roughly 30 minutes, it said. Of Uber’s 91 million MAPCs, 15 million ordered and received a meal using Uber Eats in Q4, “tapping into our network of more than 220,000 restaurants in over 500 cities globally,” it said.