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Uber Renews Global Maps Deal With TomTom: Growth Thesis Strengthening?

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Key Takeaways

  • UBER will integrate TomTom's maps, APIs and live services to enhance global platform operations.
  • The partnership improves routing and fare accuracy at complex locations like airports and stadiums.
  • Anonymized trip data from UBER will feed into TomTom's platform, enhancing real-time map updates.

In a customer-friendly move, Uber Technologies (UBER - Free Report) has renewed its partnership with navigation company TomTom. Following the agreement, Uber will integrate TomTom’s maps, Maps APIs and live services across its global platform. The partnership will enhance Uber’s routing, fare calculations, and pick-up and drop-off accuracy, particularly in complex locations such as airports, transit hubs and stadiums. This is expected to reduce travel time and uncertainty while improving reliability and operational efficiency for both drivers and riders.

TomTom’s mapping platform continuously aggregates data from thousands of sources and processes billions of data points to keep maps current. The technological collaboration establishes a feedback loop in which anonymized real-world data from Uber trips is incorporated into TomTom’s maps, improving updates on roads, turn restrictions and closures.  

Uber and TomTom are building on their long-standing partnership (the initial deal was inked in 2015) and actively exploring new opportunities to introduce additional location-based tools that will further expand the capabilities of the former’s platform and enhance the overall user experience.

We remind investors that way back in 2015, Uber had looked to buy Nokia's (NOK - Free Report) mapping division, HERE, for around $3 billion. The aim of buying Nokia’s mapping division was to gain control of mapping technology for its core services and future self-driving cars. However, Uber ultimately lost its bid to buy Nokia’s mapping service, which was sold to a consortium of German automakers.

Following the failure to buy Nokia’s HERE, Uber partnered with TomTom and also acquired Microsoft's (MSFT - Free Report) Bing Maps imagery division, bringing in talent and street-level data for autonomous vehicle development. Through this deal, Uber absorbed data-collection engineers from Microsoft to bolster its mapping work. Roughly 100 Microsoft employees joined Uber following the deal.

UBER’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of UBER have lost 10.8%  in the past six months against the Zacks Internet-Services industry’s 69.6% growth in the same timeframe.

6-Month Price Comparison

Zacks Investment ResearchImage Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, UBER trades at a 12-month forward price-to-sales of 2.94X. UBER is inexpensive compared with its industry, having a Value Score of  D.

Zacks Investment ResearchImage Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for UBER’s fourth-quarter 2025, full-year 2025 and 2026 earnings have moved north over the past 60 days.

Zacks Investment ResearchImage Source: Zacks Investment Research

UBER's Zacks Rank

UBER currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.


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