Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made a $9 million purchase of his company’s shares on Monday.
Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
Tesla
CEO Elon Musk’s stock sales have investors buzzing about corporate insider stock transactions. But not every transportation CEO is selling.
Uber Technologies
(ticker: UBER) CEO Dara Khosrowshahi made a $9 million purchase of his company’s shares on Monday. Though the reopening has seen a recovery for Uber’s ride-sharing business, the stock has struggled, down some 14% in 2021 and trading below its 2019 initial-public-offering price of $45.
Earlier this month, Uber reported its first quarterly profit on adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda. However, using generally accepted accounting principles, it still posted a net loss of $2.4 billion. The company blamed the GAAP loss on a $3.2 billion unrealized pretax loss from its stake in Chinese ride-sharing firm
DiDi Global
(DIDI).
Khosrowshahi bought 200,000 shares at an average price of $44.92, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He now owns about 1.18 million. It was his first open-market purchase of shares since he bought 250,000 in November 2019.
Uber didn’t return requests from Barron’s seeking comment from the company or the executive.
Khosrowshahi’s purchase helped push Uber stock higher Tuesday, but only fleetingly. Tesla stock (TSLA), on the other hand, mostly held up as Musk disclosed a series of stock sales, after conducting a
Twitter
poll in which users voted for him to sell 10% of his stake. Keep in mind that he’s also exercising expiring stock options, so his sales ostensibly will help pay options-related taxes.
Write to Connor Smith at connor.smith@barrons.com
