Uber CEO says he’s building the next Amazon, though growth is slowing

In its IPO filing, Uber posted an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.85 billion in 2018. But Uber executives have leveraged its losses as a way to compare the company to another infamously unprofitable company at its IPO: Amazon. Uber’s financials still look different from Amazon’s at its IPO. As Uber prepared its debut, it was a much bigger company than Amazon was and already has slowing revenue growth. But Khosrowshahi said in his CNBC interview that he stands behind the comparison.

“It’s a fair comparison at the wrong time,” he said. “So a lot of private companies now are holding off much longer before they go public. We are much bigger, much more mature as a company as we go public, and if you do look at the growth rates, our audience is growing 33% on a year on year basis, transactions are growing 36%. To be able to grow transactions 36% on a $50 billion base is pretty incredible, and we hope to keep it going.”

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Watch: Why Uber is losing money and what it will take to become profitable