Uber Reports Earnings on Aug. 5, Followed by Lyft on Aug. 6. Here's the Better Buy Now.

The 2 biggest names successful ridesharing study wrong a time of each different adjacent week. Uber Technologies (NYSE: UBER) posts second-quarter results earlier the marketplace opens connected Aug. 5, and Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) follows aft the adjacent connected Aug. 6. For investors weighing the pair, the prime looks clearer than the calendar timing suggests, and to maine it comes down decisively successful Uber's favor.

Size shapes astir everything here. Uber controls astir three-quarters of the U.S. rideshare marketplace and generates good implicit $50 cardinal successful yearly revenue, portion Lyft holds astir a 4th of the marketplace with gross person to $6.5 billion.

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Uber is besides acold much diversified. Beyond rides, it runs a monolithic food-delivery limb and a fast-growing advertizing business, giving it aggregate engines adjacent if immoderate 1 slows. Just arsenic important, Uber is present solidly profitable, with operating income climbing sharply successful caller quarters, portion Lyft is lone hardly successful the black. One institution is simply a global, multi-sided level showing disconnected existent cash; the different is simply a single-market ride-sharing app inactive moving to beryllium it tin gain accordant profits.

The autonomous chaotic paper

Both look the aforesaid looming question: What happens if and erstwhile robotaxis arrive? Here again, Uber looks amended positioned. Lyft plans to adhd Alphabet's Waymo vehicles to its app, which is simply a tenable start. But Uber has assembled a web of astir 30 autonomous-vehicle partners and aims to connection robotaxi rides crossed 15 cities by year-end. That turns the biggest menace to ridesharing into an opportunity, due to the fact that self-driving fleets inactive request a request level to capable their seats, and Uber's tremendous rider basal is precisely that. In a driverless future, standard becomes an adjacent bigger advantage, and Uber has acold much of it.

The takeaway for investors

I would not bargain either banal simply to bushed an net date, since 1 4th seldom settles a semipermanent thesis, and some could plaything hard connected the reports. But if you are choosing betwixt them close now, Uber is the amended buy. It offers scale, genuine profitability, diversification good beyond rides, and the strongest manus successful the coming autonomous era.

Lyft is the cheaper banal and could bounce further connected an upbeat quarter, making it the higher-risk, higher-reward enactment for bargain hunters consenting to stake connected its turnaround. For astir investors, though, the breadth, profits, and staying powerfulness of Uber's concern triumph the matchup. Watch some reports for immoderate signs of slowing thrust request oregon borderline pressure, but the fundamentals constituent intelligibly toward the marketplace leader.