Uber's Eats unit outpaces car rides
NEW YORK — Uber's food delivery business brought in more money during the third quarter than its signature rides business, showing just how much consumer behavior has changed — and how far the company has adapted — since the pandemic struck.
The ride-hailing company lost $1.09 billion in the third quarter as many customers continued to stay out of shared vehicles.
Uber brought in $3.13 billion in revenue, down 18 percent from the same time last year. Its mobility business, which includes ride-hailing, scooters and bikes, brought in $1.37 billion during the quarter, down 53 percent from the same time last year. Despite the decline, the rides business showed improvement from the second quarter, when it brought in just $790 million.
Its Eats business generated $1.45 billion in revenue, up 125 percent from a year ago as restaurants relied on Uber for delivery and the trend of people ordering in instead of dining out during the pandemic continued.
Uber's food delivery business also brought in more revenue than its rides business in the second quarter, when demand for rides was even lower due to the pandemic.
Uber Eats continued to add restaurants to its app, and its partnerships with restaurants grew by more than 70 percent compared with last year. It also added a contactless payment feature to allow customers who are dining in restaurants to pay using the Eats app. Uber also expanded its grocery delivery service.
GM booms, nets $4B profit in 3Q
DETROIT — General Motors posted huge third-quarter numbers Thursday, pulling in $4 billion in net profit over the period, after a short money-losing stretch as the spread of COVID-19 shut down all U.S. auto factories.
GM's adjusted earnings were $2.83 per share, easily outpacing Wall Street's per-share projections of $1.43, according to a survey by FactSet. Revenue of $35.5 billion was about in line.
The company swung back strongly from a $806 million loss in the previous quarter when it was restarting factories shuttered during the early stages of the pandemic.
Auto sales across the globe have bounced back strongly, particularly in China, which has held additional coronavirus outbreaks in check. GM's sales in China jumped 12 percent in the third quarter, with sales of its Buick and Cadillac brands both rising more than 25 percent.
In the U.S., GM's most profitable market where the pandemic has gone largely unchecked, sales fell 9.9 percent compared with a year ago. That was a dramatic improvement over the 34 percent sales drop in the second quarter.
Worker output in US climbs 4.9%
WASHINGTON — U.S. productivity increased between July and September, but at a slower pace than in the previous quarter.
Productivity advanced 4.9 percent in the third quarter, following an even larger 10.6 percent surge in the previous three months, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Labor costs fell by 8.9 percent after rising by 8.5 percent in the second quarter.
Productivity measures the amount of output per hour of work and is a key component in rising living standards.
Even with the third quarter slowdown, productivity is higher than it has over much of the past decade. Productivity grew by a modest 1.7 percent for all of last year after an even slower 1.4 percent gain in 2018.
Economists have had parse numbers this year distorted by the pandemic, with the big surge in the second quarter revealing how employment dropped more sharply than output. With fewer workers employed, productivity at many companies was elevated.
"The data have been especially volatile quarter-to-quarter reflecting the impact of COVID-19 on the economy," said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. "The underlying trend in productivity will likely moderate in the near term."
Pioneering Black doll in toy hall
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Baby Nancy, the first Black baby doll to have an Afro and other authentic features, was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday, along with sidewalk chalk and the wooden block game Jenga. The 2020 honorees were recognized for their creativity and popularity over time.
They were chosen by a panel of experts from among 12 finalists that also included bingo, Breyer Horses, Lite-Brite, Masters of the Universe, My Little Pony, Risk, Sorry!, Tamagotchi, and Yahtzee.
Baby Nancy was the inaugural doll for Shindana Toys, a California company launched in 1968 a not-for-profit Black community self-help organization that emerged in the aftermath of the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Shindana folded in 1983, but Baby Nancy "still stands as a landmark doll that made commercial and cultural breakthoughs," curator Michelle Parnett-Dwyer said.
Mortgage rates in US keep slilding
WASHINGTON — U.S. long-term mortgage rates were flat to lower this week, as the key 30-year rate fell to a new all-time low for the 12th time this year.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year benchmark loan declined to 2.78 percent from 2.81 percent last week. By contrast, the rate averaged 3.69 percent a year ago. The average rate on the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage stayed at 2.32 percent.
The historically low borrowing rates have bolstered demand from prospective homebuyers. Demand for homes has remained strong despite a brief slowdown in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, but at the same time the rise in home prices has stretched the limits of affordability for many would-be buyers.
DOJ sues to block Visa's Plaid deal
CHARLOTTE — The Department of Justice sued payment processing giant Visa Inc. on Thursday to block the company's purchase of financial technology startup Plaid, calling it a monopolistic takeover of a potential competitor to Visa's ubiquitous payments network.
The lawsuit seeks to stop Visa's purchase of Plaid, which at $5.3 billion would have been the second-largest acquisition in the company's history, second only to Visa's buyout of Visa Europe a few years ago.
Plaid provides the infrastructure to allow consumers and businesses to pay directly from their bank account. Services like Venmo, SoFi, Stripe and TransferWise all use Plaid as a way for consumers to send money from their bank accounts to another party without having to use the debit card infrastructure that's largely controlled by Visa and its competitor Mastercard.
Visa earns a small fee from every transaction that is run on its network. The fee varies depending on the card, but debit transactions tend to be cheaper to run on Visa's network than credit card transactions. But those tens of billions of debit card transactions add up, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue for Visa every quarter.
By providing an infrastructure that would bypass the traditional debit card networks, Plaid presented a competitive threat to Visa, the Department of Justice argued in its lawsuit, and without it being an independent company, consumers and businesses would in turn pay higher prices to take Visa debit cards.
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Uber's earnings show how consumer behavior has changed; GM has a blowout quarter - Charleston Post Courier
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