"Subsidies for Uber's drivers are responsible for the majority of the company's losses globally, [head of finance] Gupta told investors"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose...
Many of their losses were due to the turf war in china, which is now over. They have a 20% stake in Didi now, which will almost certainly recover their losses.
Are you sure that's true? That sounds like the marketing speak that Travis K. spouts, but I wouldn't be surprised if that weren't the whole truth. Like any other "startup", you can claim to be profitable pretty easily -- you just have to find a hand-wavy way to qualify that ("if you exclude debt and operating expenses we're net margin profitable!").