Uber just posted its results from the first quarter of the year, even though they aren’t a public company. Their losses narrowed from about $991 million in the fourth quarter, to $708 million in the first quarter of 2017. That’s still a pretty hefty loss for the company, a company that has yet to post a positive quarter (the company doesn’t actually post earnings often, and that’s because it is not a public company). Uber also announced that revenue rose to $3.4 billion for the quarter, which is an 18% increase from the fourth quarter. An Uber spokesperson stated that “the narrowing of our losses in the first quarter puts us on a good trajectory towards profitability.”
On top of this, the company’s head of finance is also leaving. This is on top of the fact that the company has not had a chief financial officer in about two years. Gautam Gupta, Uber’s head of finance, will be leaving the ride-sharing service in July. His plans after Uber include another startup in San Francisco, according to Uber. However that Startup was not named. Gupta is one of about a dozen high-profile executives to leave Uber since February of this year. The company also fired their head of self-driving technology earlier this week, Anthony Levandowski, and this was due to his failure to comply with court orders in the Waymo v Uber case, that is ongoing.
Lately, Uber has been taking a lot of damage, and has been in full damage control. Between their lawsuit with Alphabet’s Waymo, and the allegations that Uber has a sexist culture. It’s something that its founder, Travis Kalanick has been trying to fight and change lately. Uber has had a tough year already, and the company is looking to turn that around. But losing their head of finance definitely won’t help them. They are now looking for quite a few executives to add to their team, and also looking for some finance executives that have experience with a public company, as Uber is looking to go public pretty soon. But the narrower loss for the quarter is definitely a step in the right direction for Uber.