Shares of Uber Technologies (UBER 2.57%) were on a roll over the past year, hitting a 52-week high of $101.99 on Sept. 22, 2025. But after the ride-hailing giant released third quarter 2025 earnings on Nov. 4, its stock price began to slide.
A contributing factor was a massive rise in Uber's capital expenditures. In the third quarter, capex totaled $98 million, more than double the $42 million spent in the prior year. This increase was due to the company's investments in strategic areas, including autonomous vehicles (AVs).
The drop in share price is a boon for investors, creating a buy opportunity. That's because Uber is a great stock to own for many reasons. Here are three of them.
Image source: Getty Images.
Uber's AV strategy
Although Wall Street frowned on Uber's capex jump, the increase illustrates the company is making investments to secure its long-term future. As CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explained, "Great technology companies deliver today while building for tomorrow."
That future involves autonomous automobiles. The company previously attempted to implement a fleet of AVs, but ultimately sold that division in 2020, choosing instead to focus on a partnership strategy.
In the ensuing years, Uber spun up numerous deals with AV companies around the globe. These include Alphabet-owned Waymo, U.K.-based Wayve, and Chinese tech giant Baidu to deploy thousands of AVs around the world on Uber's platform.
This strategy is smart. Uber doesn't incur the costs of building self-driving cars, but still plays a key role for its partners, enabling it to ride the tailwind of a growing industry in a capital-efficient manner.
The company's self-driving car approach has grown more ambitious. Uber is partnering with artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor titan Nvidia to combine Nvidia's autonomous vehicle technology with its platform.
Together, they will offer a scalable global ride-hailing ecosystem, bringing together robot and human drivers. Businesses such as Stellantis and Lucid are leveraging Nvidia's AV tech, and as these other companies deliver robotaxis to market, they can seamlessly add their fleets to Uber's marketplace. In fact, Stellantis is already working with Uber.
NYSE: UBER
Key Data Points
Uber's burgeoning business
Uber has already extended its ride-hailing model into delivery services. It's now working to expand into a new field of work brought on by the arrival of artificial intelligence.
The company is calling this area Uber AI Solutions. This division will focus on providing services to help businesses build high-quality AI models. Just as Uber's platform matches passengers to drivers, its new AI-focused work will connect companies constructing AI with professionals to perform tasks such as testing AI models and validating AI's language translations.
Uber's expansion into other types of work is building on its successful platform model, which saw ride-hailing revenue grow 20% year over year to $7.7 billion and delivery sales jump 29% year over year to $4.5 billion in Q3 2025. This contributed to overall Q3 revenue growth of 20% year over year to $13.5 billion.
Uber's outstanding financials
The company's rising revenue is just the start of its robust financials, contributing to Q3 2025 net income attributable to Uber of $6.6 billion, up from $2.6 billion in 2024. Consequently, Q3 diluted earnings per share (EPS) soared to $3.11 compared to $1.20 in the prior year.
That's just the start, according to Uber CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah. He stated, "Understand that we are committed to annual profit expansion -- year-over-year profit expansion for as far into the future as we can see."
His words are not an idle boast. Uber's diluted EPS has been rising steadily for the last few years.
UBER EPS Diluted (TTM) data by YCharts.
This is one way the company has delivered outstanding growth in shareholder value. Uber also knocked it out of the ballpark in terms of free cash flow per share, with the metric increasing over the past several years.
This indicates the company is generating more cash than it needs for operations and capital expenditures, signaling robust financial health and giving Uber financial flexibility for initiatives such as stock buybacks.
UBER Free Cash Flow Per Share data by YCharts.
Contrasting these excellent financial results against Uber's share price shows its valuation has reached an attractive level. This can be seen in the price-to-earnings ratio.
The chart shows Uber's earnings multiple in 2026 is lower than back in April, when the Trump administration's tariff policies caused the stock market to plunge, suggesting Uber shares are a great value now.
UBER PE Ratio data by YCharts.
The fact that Uber management is thinking beyond ride-hailing and investing accordingly, hence its growth in capex, demonstrates its desire to become a bigger business than it is today. It's taken existing strengths in transportation data and married it with the AV industry. Next, it's expanding into the heart of AI technology with Uber AI Solutions.
Given Uber's exciting future and Wall Street's current shortsightedness, now is a great opportunity to grab Uber shares at a compelling valuation.
