Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing - Can Uber Make an “Everything” App?

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Uber has been in the middle of the autonomy debate and recently added hotels to the mix, so we’re wondering if they can be the “everything” app built around transportation? First quarter results indicated they have the momentum to do it. We also get to results from Disney and Novo Nordisk, which had investors cheering today. Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss: - Uber’s Q1 2026 results - Can Uber make an “everything” app? - Disney’s momentum and challenges - Novo Nordisk’s GLP-1 conundrum Companies discussed: Uber (UBER), Expedia (EXPE), Disney (DIS), Novo Nordisk (NOVO). Host: Travis Hoium Guests: Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren Engineer: Dan Boyd Disclosure: Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. The Motley Fool and its affiliates (collectively, “TMF”) do not endorse, recommend, or verify the accuracy or completeness of the statements made within advertisements. TMF is not involved in the offer, sale, or solicitation of any securities advertised herein and makes no representations regarding the suitability, or risks associated with any investment opportunity presented. Investors should conduct their own due diligence and consult with legal, tax, and financial advisors before making any investment decisions. TMF assumes no responsibility for any losses or damages arising from this advertisement. We’re committed to transparency: All personal opinions in advertisements from Fools are their own. The product advertised in this episode was loaned to TMF and was returned after a test period or the product advertised in this episode was purchased by TMF. Advertiser has paid for the sponsorship of this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠megaphone.fm/adchoices⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earnings season is in full swing, and we have good news for investors today. Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. I'm Travis Holm. I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. And this is one of those days during earnings season where there is just a flood of earnings. So we got some interesting announcements. We're going to talk today about Uber, Disney, and Novo Nordisk. Let's start with Uber, Lou. Disruption has been on the market's mind in 2026, and that has impacted a lot of software-related stocks. Uber is maybe in the crossfire a little bit here, but shares were down about 12% over the past year.

There's worries that Waymo is going to take market share. Tesla is potentially expanding, although we don't know how quickly that's going to happen. But Uber is really taking an interesting strategy here, not only moving into autonomy overall, but also becoming more than a ride sharing company they've got more retailers they recently announced hotels on the app and their earnings were pretty good i mean they're still growing at 20 ish percent and just compounding that year over year so when you look at their earnings in the strategy shift that they're going through right now what do you what do you think i mean look i love what they're doing i think the core business looks great i mean this whole idea of like and you know we were talking about

beforehand this everything app that they're creating moving around i'll take the under on that travis i find me you don't think that they can that uber is going to be a one-stop shop for all things mobility related whether you're moving people products vacation look look it makes total sense just like paypal's everything app made total sense as your one-stop shop on your phone uh just like meta what they tried to do with whatsapp especially in developing markets made all the sense in the world as a one-stop everything app x makes perfect sense as a one-stop everything app people don't want everything apps companies want everything apps because everything means we get all of the revenue we can expand our business on the back of our customer base i get that but

customers don't want that customers are used to what they're doing there's really unless you really, really give them a deal and ruin the economics for you. How do you change just behavior? And look, it's a great idea. If they're not spending too much, go for it. But it's not going to work. None of these everything apps have worked and this one won't work. Let me push back on that with one example, and that's Amazon. Amazon, I think, has probably done a better job than any other company becoming the everything app for at least shopping and then throw a little bit of video on top of that throw you know pharmaceuticals and all kinds of stuff you don't think that uber could potentially do that with sort of their realm it's not retail

it's more hey i need to move myself or i needed to move something around and that kind of that's kind of the core is that transportation as a service i sort of reject the premise of that comparison i don't think i mean amazon is doing a lot of things but i think more amazon desperately begs me to do Grubhub through their app. And I don't do it. That's the everything app comparison. And I don't think that works. The fact that Amazon has expanded into new markets. I don't know if that's because they have an everything app. Again, I get the idea of it. If I want to, but look, if I want to ride share, I'm probably going to go to Uber to train me to do other things like, oh, I want to, you know, book a trip. I'm going to go to Uber. No, I'm going to go to booking. I'm

going to go to Delta. I'm going to go to all of the things I go to. Again, you know, points for trying Goldstar. Again, I can't come back to this enough. The core business looks pretty good. So I guess this is when you experiment and go ahead and try, but it's not going to work. We've seen this so many times and it makes so much sense for the companies. The companies fall in love with it because look at all the rest. If we could just get 2% of this market, that would be so much revenue. Those are the conversations they're having right now. And yeah, I get why they're all slapping themselves in the back. But wake me up when it happens. Rachel, do you think that this is a strategy shift that's fun to talk about, but it's still the core business is really what matters

here? You know, revenue was up in the quarter 14 percent. We had gross bookings were up 25 percent. Things seem like they're doing pretty well in the core, like Lou said. But are these ancillary additions going to mean anything? Yeah, I do think the important focus right now is the core business, which is doing exceptionally well. But I think I have a little bit of a different take on this than Lou. I mean, obviously, we're seeing this strategy, right, where they're wanting to shift from being known as the ride hailing and delivery app to maybe become something of a super app, which would center sort of on the entire travel journey, right? This partnership they have where they're adding hundreds of thousands of hotel listings through Expedia and vacation

rentals via Vrbo. This is this idea that we're seeing where Uber wants to be the first app you open, say, when you land in a new city. And that goal, I think, is to create kind of a very seamless experience where you maybe book your hotel, you get a discounted ride there, you order food or forgotten essentials. It's interesting, too, because this is a model that has proven really, really successful in other parts of the world, right? You think of WeChat in China. It's sort of the gold standard of super apps. You've got a billion users on there that do everything from messaging and paying bills to booking their doctor's appointments. You've got Grab in in Southeast Asia, right? There's Gojek in Indonesia. And so this is a model that has

been successful in many, many, many markets. Now, in a lot of the Western markets where Uber predominantly operates, this is not so much the type of app that consumers tend to use. And so I think they're trying to see whether the appetite is there. I mean, I think by bundling some of these services, this idea is to create something of a loyalty loop, right? Where maybe you earn credits on big ticket hotel stay. It pays for your daily rides. There's a lot of incentives with Uber One. There's a challenge, though, for consumer adoption. And I think that's the biggest question about whether this works for Uber specifically long term, because the model itself works very, very well in other markets. Well, the interesting piece here, Lou, is the Uber One

piece. And the analogy that I would make is to Costco. Costco is the company that made this really profitable and huge business out of they basically run their stores at break even. That's why they have really low gross margins. That's why their products are cheaper when you go into the store and they build everything around basically being break even at the store and making that the best experience they could possibly and then all the profit comes from those memberships that you pay each year to be a member of Costco. Could something like that work for uber i mean you know reduce that take rate and say hey if we have you know 100 million subscribers uh to uber one at you know 10 20 bucks a month that could be a really good business

it could but again i mean look if this isn't that novel right i mean the difference with costco is is that at the end of the day you're getting a really good price on all of these things and you know i mean i don't know can with third parties can uber manage those margins but look, I'm flying Delta tomorrow. The second I bought an airplane ticket, Delta said, hey, you want to get your rental car through me? You want to get your hotel through me? And you know what? I didn't. And then I paid for it with a Capital One card. Capital One said, hey, you're taking a trip. Do you know about our Capital One travel app where you can get your rental car and hotel? You know, look, look at what Airbnb has tried with experiences. Tell me. I mean, that's

that's a fine ad. That is a great pushback. Airbnb has not been successful moving into other areas. Well, what I'd say is that, again, I get why Uber wants to do this. I get why it makes sense. I think the really hard thing is to change consumer behavior. Why does it make sense for me, the consumer, to do it? I get convenience, but I got convenience everything. I can go to booking.com and do it all if I really want convenience. I just think changing consumer behavior is much harder than these companies realize at the time.

Again, I go back to, I thought the PayPal everything app was a really good idea. And I do think that if we had followed through on it, probably it would have made my life and everyone's life easier. And yet none of us did it anyway, because we're stuck in our habits. And I feel like that's what's going to happen here. Can Uber change people's behavior? Just remember that 20 years ago, getting in a random person's vehicle to get a ride across town was a completely foreign concept.

But again, yes, it was a convenient, right. I didn't have another way I'm used to doing it. It was a foreign concept. I mean, you know, again, yeah, I get it. I love these straw man, you know, reasons why. I'd love to be an optimist here. It would probably be easy to just do it all through one app. But again, I'll believe it when I see.

Well, the market is buying it for today. Shares were up about 10% early in trading. So we'll see if that holds. When we come back, we're going to get to the news from Disney. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. welcome back to molly fools and gems investing we got results from disney this morning and this is one of those companies that's gotten a lot of flack for investors you know shares have really struggled if you look back over the past decade or so they have a new ceo josh tomorrow this quarter

i thought was interesting rachel because there's not a lot of flash there but it is just sort of steady as it goes. The company's growing. Profitability is improving. This is what we want to see. And Disney just seems like the kind of company that the market would love. You know, you have a lot of these big retailers that the market's saying, hey, these aren't these companies aren't going anywhere. Let's let's trade 50 times earnings. Disney's not getting the same love from the market, but it seems like the results are showing that this business has a ton of staying power. Yeah, I think it goes to show that sometimes market responses to earnings reports are not always uh logical i mean this was a solid fantastic quarter for the business

sort of sort of more of the same or they hit a record 25 billion in revenue that was up seven percent year over year so the core business continues to grow at a really solid clip operating income for disney plus and hulu jumped 88 you saw the entertainment division grow revenue by 10 and that was notable because they're sort of carrying the weight for the stagnant sports segment, right, that's dealing with a lot of pressure due to rising rights fees. And even though we're seeing, you know, consumer spending fatigue, we're seeing some shifts in international travel experiences, revenue rose 7%. And part of that was because they increased the average spend per guest. The newly minted CEO, Josh Tomorrow, he's moving fast to really centralize

marketing and use AI personalization to keep streaming margins above 10%. He's been cutting costs through strategic layoffs. They're moving forward with that $60 billion investment plan. They're trying to churn hits like Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 into physical destinations. And the takeaway for me here is I think betting on physical experiences is very much a safer long-term play for Disney than, say, trying to enter into sort of this endless content arms race with Netflix, leading into that experiences division, which already accounts for a lot of their overall profit. They're monetizing their fans multiple times. This is proving to be a really consistently profitable strategy, even in a difficult macro environment. Yeah, Lou, it seems

like the experiences business tomorrow came from the experiences side of the business. So that does seem to be the core. It didn't say that anything was changing strategically, but that sports business more and more seems like it doesn't quite fit under the Disney umbrella. So maybe we see some changes there but you know it seems like there's a lot of tailwinds for disney you know i did a little bit of research uh recently on the disney experiences and they have a lot of capacity in florida coming online that's not to mention the cruise lines and all the other expansions they have around the world so this may be this may be moving in the right direction for a while yeah so we're not going to call this a referendum on tomorrow because he was only ceo for 14 days

of that quarter so i doubt you know but but again i mean that that's good we don't want it this looked like a perfectly fine large company report you know i mean look there's a lot of parts in the investing world where you know we're not going to strike up the band for seven percent revenue growth high single digit revenue growth but given disney's size given the fact that i mean my big takeaway here is that you know everything's fine and you know with with slow and steady maybe what we needed with disney because we haven't gotten that quarter to quarter for a couple of years. I will say, though, I don't know why this big amalgamation of assets is really should wow investors or excite investors. You mentioned sports. There's a legacy TV business. The more

and more I look at this company, the more and more I think that it would benefit from some more strategic pairings or more strategic kind of investitures than I realized. We've talked about the legacy tv we've talked about um maybe sports maybe almost all of the streaming i don't you know maybe not get rid of it completely but find partnerships just to focus on as you say the experiences the things to do really well getting that ip keeping that ip in house but i don't know if this is ever really going to work as a market wow investment as is when it's just this huge bundle of everything i think maybe the demario era might be about what they sell where they partner where they decide we don't have to do it in-house i think that might be what the future is for this

company it's pretty easy to see some value here if you're a long-term investor though you know lou's probably right this is not going to be a double double digit 20 growth company but company is growing price earnings multiple on a trailing basis is 17 on a forward basis it's under 15 if we get some sort of you know pullback in the market the the market is probably going to like some of these safer stocks that single digit growth at a you know mid-teens price earnings multiple isn't isn't all that bad of a formula well so the question there is is that why if that pullback comes why does it come if it comes because the consumer is under pressure it's probably not going to be disney yelling into there right because so much of it is the parks and experiences

but yeah i do think that this is looking more like ballast than exciting again i wonder if there isn't a way to keep the to not turn into six flags to keep the natural advantages they have over six flags but not have all of this completely in house i do think that you know if i'm an investment banker that's what i'm spending time trying to talk to disney management about i do you think there's ways to craft out a middle ground that might make this a more interesting investment while also not giving up on their competitive strengths? Well, the market likes what it hears today. Shares are up 8% as we're recording, so we'll see where things go in the future. When we come back, we are going to get to some good news for Novo Nordisk. You're listening

to Motley Fool, Hidden Gems Invested. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life. You know, the same way you can skip an ad. I get it. I'm Siaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. welcome to mountain fool hidden gems investing novo nordisk reported earnings as well over the past 12 hours or so rachel this is the area that you follow closely but as i was looking at this

i was shocked to see nova nordisk stock is down 75 since its peak in 2024 that is just a crazy fall for a company that i think is still very identifiable with this glp1 craze things are turning around. At least it seems like the market's thinking we got a little bit of good news today. So what did you see from the results? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest and most obvious takeaway is the oral version of Wigovi that they are selling is proving to be a major volume engine for the business. So this was the first full quarter of the Wigovi pill being on the U.S. market. It did the equivalent of about $354 million in sales, million dollars. I'm translating that from Danish Croter, but that was essentially double what analysts were expecting. And so

there's this idea that Novo's may be tapping into a segment of patients that weren't using the injectable version by making the drug a simple pill, lowering the barrier to entry. Their overall sales in the quarter jumped about 32% on a constant currency basis. And the Wigovi brand now controls about 65% of all new prescriptions in the U.S. obesity market. And they actually elevated their guidance a bit. They're now looking for sales and profits to contract by only 4% to 12% instead of 13%. So they're still looking at declines. So we're seeing more prescriptions, but less profits. Does this mean that they're lowering prices? I think this is what we've seen with some of their partnerships. They're, I think, down almost 90% from that kind of $2,000 a month. Is it we're going to lower prices or we're going to make it up in volume? Is that the story? I think that's what they're hoping, right? So they're cutting prices by up to 70 percent in some channels. You've got list prices that are set to drop another 50 percent in 2027. But there's something I want to note here. The Wagovi pills require significantly more of the key active ingredient, some of glutide, to be effective compared to an injection. So what that means is Novo is using more raw material to make less profit per patient.

So that is a drag on the margins that doesn't exist for injectable drugs. And of course, they've already been losing ground to the likes of Eli Lilly with competition in the GLP-1 space. The other point I'll make is they are spending billions on CapEx to build massive new factories in places like Ireland, like Italy. They're dealing with a very, very competitive landscape right now. So if demand slows down, you know, if the volume drift slows in any way or you have a better drug from a competitor that hits the market, You've got a major next-gen GLP-1 from Eli Lilly coming soon. Could they be dealing with very expensive, underutilized infrastructure? That remains to be seen.

The classic thing, right, Travis? We're making it up on volume, right? I feel like that meme where, well, it didn't work for these others, but it might work for us comes in here. Look, it's fine and good. I think they are second best right now in their core market right now, if we're honest, and that's an issue. It's especially an issue because, look, Eli Lilly is investing heavily in what's next. They have done billions in deals this year. I love it when a company takes profits from an existing business and tries to invest in the future with it.

We haven't seen that from them. I mean, I know they are very, very high on some parts of their pipeline since being candidates here. But if you dig down, a lot of that pipeline is just different ways to express GLP. good for them. Use this volume and try and invest in going somewhere else. I think that would be my advice for them right now. Just make sure you don't turn out a one-hit wonder because in pharmaceuticals, just even if it's going well with the way patents work, one-hit wonders tend not to fare too well over time. Yeah, the clock is ticking. They have about five years left on the patent in the U.S. That patent expired in Canada. Whoops, they forgot to file some paperwork and

pay a couple hundred dollars to keep that exclusive in Canada. But yeah, for now, things do seem to be going well. But I agree. You look at Eli Lilly's pipeline and in particular, Reddit True Tide, they've got some other things outside of GLP ones that are really compelling. So if you're looking at pharmaceutical stocks, despite the fact that there's a bounce today, look at the fact that lowering prices is really what Novo Nordisk is doing. As always, people on the program may have Interests in the stocks they talk about in The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows The Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers.

Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our show notes. For Lou Whiteman, Rachel Warren, and Dan Boyd behind the glass, I'm Travis William. Thanks for listening to The Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. We'll see you here tomorrow. you