Wedbush Initiates Uber At Outperform, Calls It The 'Amazon Of Transportation'

Uber Technologies won’t list on the NYSE until next week, but it’s already scoring advocates.

The Rating

Wedbush analysts Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe initiated with an Outperform rating on Uber and a $47 price target.

The Thesis

To Wedbush, Uber is the Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN of the $5.7-trillion global rideshare industry.

“The ridesharing industry has become one of the most transformational growth sectors of the global consumer market over the past five years with Uber establishing itself as the clear #1 player and in our opinion is paving a similar road to what Amazon did to transform retail/ecommerce and Facebook did for social media,” Ives and Backe wrote in a note.

The company’s brand loyalty as well as its position in third-party food delivery, freight and logistics, bikes and scooters bolster the analysts’ bullishness. Uber appears poised to expand its platform with various monetization methods, including last-mile multimodal trips.

And its core business, alone, proves promising.

“The disruptive dynamic that Uber and the ridesharing phenomenon has had on the taxi industry is clearly evident from the price of NYC taxi medallions going from about $1 million to now $200,000 as we expect the ridesharing industry to grow 4x more than the US taxi/limousine market over the next decade based on our analysis,” Wedbush wrote.

Uber has grown globally to offset declines in its U.S. market share.

Wedbush holds a Neutral rating and $80 price target on competitor Lyft Inc LYFT.

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