Ridesharing just hit a massive milestone yesterday, with one of America’s largest cities working hand-in-glove with the largest ridesharing app in the world. New York City officially agreed to list all of its taxis on the Uber (NYSE: UBER) app, a move that should hopefully reduce high taxi fares and provide more business to cab drivers, who’ve been facing increased competition from apps like Uber.
Two existing taxi-hailing apps in New York, owned by Curb and Creative Mobile Technologies, will end up integrating their software into the Uber system, essentially merging NYC taxis and Uber drivers into one platform. The ridesharing giant said it expects the updated service to launch sometime this spring.
The agreement represents a big shift in how the company has been perceived. In the past, Uber has faced scrutiny from taxi cab companies, with many cities barring Uber and other ridesharing companies from operating. Now that attitude has completely reversed.
The agreement is also a win for both parties. Drivers no longer have to worry about finding fares during off-peak hours, while riders will now have access to over 16,000 taxis in New York. It also helps Uber, as the company has been facing a shortage of available drivers. In contrast, taxi cab companies are now able to tap into a wider pool of potential customers more consistently.
“We are excited about any proposal to more easily connect passengers with taxis and look forward to learning more about this agreement between Uber and the taxi apps and ensuring it complies with TLC rules,” said Ryan Wanttaja, acting commissioner of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.
Shares of Uber were up around 4.5% following the news on Thursday. Most analysts are now quite optimistic about the company, given how groundbreaking this agreement was. Uber’s management even said that it hopes to get every taxi in the world onto its platform by 2025.
While that’s obviously unlikely to happen, it goes to show that thanks to this deal with NYC, many other cities are likely to follow suit as well. Taxis are already available on the Uber app in other countries also, such as Germany, Spain, and South Korea.
Out of the 43 analysts covering the company, over 39 of them are bullish on Uber’s future prospects. Only three are neutral, while only one Wall Street analyst has a sell rating on the stock, believing Uber to be overvalued at its current price tag.
Uber Company Profile
Uber Technologies is a technology provider that matches riders with drivers, hungry people with restaurants and food delivery service providers, and shippers with carriers. The firm’s on-demand technology platform could eventually be used for additional products and services, such as autonomous vehicles, delivery via drones, and Uber Elevate, which, as the firm refers to it, provides “aerial ridesharing.” Uber Technologies is headquartered in San Francisco and operates in over 63 countries with over 91 million users that order rides or foods at least once a month. Approximately 83% of its gross revenue comes from ridesharing and 16% from food delivery. – Warrior Trading News
