Uber CEO Khosrowshahi responds to buyback policy criticism, FT reports

After the Financial Times released a report criticizing the company’s buyback policy, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote to the journal defending the company’s actions, Robert Armstrong and Ethan Wu of The Financial Times. The journal previously argued Uber‘s plan to steadily buy back shares was a bad one, stating it should only buy back shares in a price-dependent way and the company is growing so fast that it must have higher-returning internal investments. In a response email, CEO Khosrowshahi said, “we have a large, utility-like business that is still in the early days of penetrating its market. This has led us to conclude that a consistent buyback programme is the right answer for Uber. We are taking the humble investment route of dollar-cost-averaging over what we hope will be multiple years. Of course, this does not preclude us from taking a more aggressive stance on capital returns if our stock were to dislocate in the coming years… As Uber’s CEO, I have to bet that my engineering pod cannot only return 20%+ next year, but also earn a similar 20%+ each and every year afterwards.”