U.S. stocks steady; Cook’s dismissal, Nvidia earnings in spotlight
Investing.com -- Uber and Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) shares faced pressure this week following a series of autonomous vehicle (AV) developments, including Tesla’s plans for self-driving ride-hailing and Waymo’s expansion efforts.
However, Bernstein analysts argue that investor concerns may be overblown.
Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) announced during its Q4 earnings call that it intends to launch unsupervised full self-driving (FSD) in Austin by June 2025, with a nationwide rollout targeted for next year.
CEO Elon Musk suggested that the main obstacle is regulatory rather than technical, stating that Tesla will initially operate its own fleet before allowing owners to add their vehicles to the network.
Bernstein notes that this "is a more aggressive timeline than we had expected." The analysts remain skeptical, questioning whether the technology is truly ready and how issues like insurance and regulatory approvals will be handled.
"Safety matters and the consequences of rushing deployment can be significant," they wrote.
Waymo, meanwhile, continues to expand its operations, testing freeway driving in Los Angeles and laying groundwork in 10 new cities. However, Bernstein argues that this "wasn’t new" and that Waymo’s ongoing testing does not rule out potential partnerships with Uber (NYSE:UBER) and Lyft.
The firm predicts that Waymo could scale to 5% U.S. rideshare market share by 2027, a figure that would represent 2.7 million trips per week but only a ~2 percentage point drag on total U.S. trip volumes.
Despite these threats, Bernstein believes "it’s going to be tough for the rideshare stocks to disprove the negative" in the short term.
However, Tesla’s ability to execute remains in question, and any setbacks in its rollout could turn into a “clearing event” for Uber and Lyft stocks, says Bernstein. In the meantime, analysts suggest that Uber can counteract some of the pressure by delivering strong Mobility segment results.