Deepak Mathivanan: Great, thanks for taking the question. Dara, upfront fares has been live in the US for a few quarters now and has definitely been a huge factor in 2023. Can you talk about the opportunities to expand this into more international markets and also perhaps integrate it with a wider range of Mobility products beyond UberX in 2024. And then just a follow-up on the grocery side. What are some of the key product initiatives for 2024 for building out the grocery vertical. And do you see opportunities to accelerate product build out and maybe even retail partnerships through acquisitions? Thanks so much.
Dara Khosrowshahi: Yes, so in terms of upfront fares, we’re very pleased with the roll out of upfront fares in the US and a number of other markets. And I’ll remind our investors to that, we actually originally rolled out upfront fares on the delivery side of the business. So delivery was built out upfront fares in terms of couriers, knowing where they’re picking-up, dropping off, or what the fair was going to be, based on the knowledge there and kind of working on that product, we’ve determined that this is a product that could work for mobility as well, because the number one issue that drivers were asking for is, I want to know where my destination is which wasn’t available. So it’s just an example of the power of the platform there, which is something that we do on the delivery side and innovate on the delivery side, finds its way on the mobility side.
And again, we were the first in the US to debut upfront fares. And drivers absolutely love that, the destination information that they’re getting. I’d say on upfront fares, actually we’re less focused on launching it globally as we are on tuning the product itself. What you observe in terms of upfront fares, now that drivers know where they’re going, and whether they’re accepting some trips or not accepting some trips, is understanding that drivers are quite idiosyncratic in terms of their desire, there are some drivers who want long-trip, some that want short trips, some that want to go to airport, some that don’t want to go the suburbs et cetera. So I think that what we can do better is actually targeting of different trips to different drivers based on their preferences or based on behavioral patterns that they’re showing us, that really is the focus going forward, offering the right trip at the right price to the right driver, which is a win-win-win, the rider wait time is lower, drivers are seeing the trips that they want at the right price and the network gets more and more efficient.
And I would also say that the nature of upfront fares, you’ve gone from just flat time and distance to now kind of point estimates for every single trip based on the driver. It accrues to players who have the kind of data skills and the amount of data that we have. We have more of these point estimates, we make more of those point estimates, than anyone else. We’re making these point estimates both in mobility and delivery. We’re doing it globally. So all things being equal, our AI algorithms are going to be able to learn more and are going to be able to be more accurate than anyone else’s which is an advantage that over a period of time is absolutely going to accrue to us. In terms of grocery, new product initiatives, it again — I think the focus for us is actually continuing to build out our merchant base.
We continue to sign up new merchants all over the world. Some of the wins in the US for big loss and Sprouts Farm — Sprouts Farmers market, Eataly as well. So, one is just driving the choice in the marketplace, and then I do think in terms of our catalog one of the areas that we’re quite focused on is making sure that the catalog is mature and searchable. And when you search for chocolate milk, you get exactly what you’re looking for. And I do think that the searchability of the catalog and a lot of the basics that we have in Grocery can get better and better. We’re very excited about the potential there. And as we continue to add on more merchants all over the world, we think this business will continue to grow and eventually get to profitability.
Operator: That concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn it back to management for closing remarks.
Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah: Thank you, Krista. So thank you all for joining us today. As we wrap up the Q&A, I did want to share a quick organizational announcement. As part of career development for the exceptional finance talent here at Uber, Alex Wang, who has done an incredible job leading IR will be expanding his scope to include some FP&A responsibilities in addition to his role in IR. And I’m delighted to announce that Deepa Subramanian, the former CFO of our Delivery business will be expanding her scope to be the VP of IR and Corporate Finance. This will be a gradual transition, but I wanted to let you know that you’ll be working with both of them in the coming quarters. So please join me in congratulating them both. And we appreciate your time. Look forward to talking to all of you again next week.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. And you may now disconnect.
