Why Uber is still a BUY despite all resignation of CEO and sexual harassment news

Summary of Uber’s financials:

l  Gross bookings were up 17% in the second quarter

l  The number of trips taken rose 150% in the past year

l  its adjusted loss fell

l  Uber drivers have earned $50 million in tips since the program started in late June

Despite all the sexual harrassment and resignation of CEO news, the ride-hail giant's core business, however, appears to have kept humming along

Uber spent most of the quarter under the cloud of a well-publicized internal investigation into sexual harassment and other unsavory aspects of company culture, and ended it with the forced resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.

The numbers:

·       Gross bookings rose 17% in the second quarter to $8.7 billion (and doubled from a year earlier).

·       Adjusted net revenue was $1.75 billion in Q2 vs $1.5 billion in Q1 and around $800 million in Q2 2016.

·       Adjusted net loss fell almost 9% quarter-over-quarter to $645 million and over 14% year-over-year.

·       Global trips increased 150% year-over-year, including 90% growth in developed markets and over 250% growth in developing markets. This excludes China, which Uber exited last summer in exchange for an equity stake in Didi Chuxing. It includes Russia, where Uber's recently-announced partnership with Yandex has yet to be approved by local regulators.

·       Uber had $6.6 billion in cash at quarter's end, down from around $7.2 billion at the end of Q1.

·       Uber drivers have earned around $50 million in tips between when the program was rolled out in select markets on June 20 and the beginning of this week. For context, Lyft reported a similar $50 million figure for a 2.5 month period ending in the middle of this past June, but that was for a longer time period and for all of its markets (Lyft originally launched tipping nearly five years ago, generating over $250 million to date).