As Uber reportedly contemplates layoffs, a look back at its post-IPO financial performance

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Yesterday news broke that Uber's CTO Thuan Pham would leave the company (confirmed), and that the American technology giant is contemplating a huge staffing cut to reduce its cost structure. COVID-19 has changed how much people move around, hampering the ride-hailing company's business.

If the cuts come to pass at the scale The Information reports is possible, they would be the steepest layoffs that we've heard of at Uber. And they would cap a reversal in fortune the company, which after a somewhat rocky IPO was enjoying fresh momentum in the later parts of 2019 and the start of 2020.

This morning we're going back in time to rewind through Uber's post-IPO financial timeline. The company reports earnings on May 7, 2020, a little over a week from today. With that event coming up, we'd best be caught up.

Uber's last year

It's hard to choose where to start today. We could go all the way back to Uber's May 2019 IPO, for example. Instead, we're going to kick off a month later (it will be clear why in a moment). Also we must be somewhat summary in the following, so not everything that happened is included. We're only talking about the bits we need most. Let's go: