The war in Iran has been rippling through the global economy since it kicked off at the end of February this year, driving up energy and food costs just about everywhere. Ride-hailing giant Uber Technologies Inc. (UBER) is not immune.

Uber Rethinks Its Emerging Market Playbook

On the company's Q3 2026 earnings call on Wednesday, Uber CFO Balaji Krishnamurthy fielded a question about supply constraints in emerging markets like Brazil and India.

"With the escalation in the war in the Middle East, fuel cost impacts have been felt globally," Krishnamurthy said. He added that the impact shows up "materially" in emerging markets, "where there is a level of price sensitivity on both the consumer and the driver side."

He then added that Uber had "seen the elevated fuel price impact in markets like Brazil and India, in particular, quite meaningfully impacting the supply situation."

Incentives, Pricing and the Algorithm

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi chimed in with more color, explaining that Uber offers incentives to both customers and delivery and driver partners, depending on special days, places and other factors.

"The cool thing is that we just rebalance incentives between riders and drivers," Khosrowshahi said. He also acknowledged the impact of geopolitical tensions on prices.

"Last year, more of the incentives went to riders to reduce price, now this year, we are taking down rider incentives, and we are using those dollars to fund driver incentives," he said, which could translate to higher prices for riders.

"We will do trade-offs against profitability, but that is something that we handle. There is a flexible incentive pool that we allocate to supply or demand based on the balance of the marketplace," Khosrowshahi outlined.

The CEO also outlined the role of algorithms in determining where to allocate incentives. "There is a lot of science, algorithmic science that goes into [incentives]," he said.

"The algorithms are making these choices, and they structurally can make these choices based on training on billions of trips, and they can allocate these investments in a way that humans just can't," Khosrowshahi said.

The Numbers Behind the Quarter

Uber's third-quarter revenue of $14.77 billion was up 10% YoY and also exceeded Wall Street consensus estimate of $14.70 billion. The ride-hailing company's adjusted EPS of 88 cents per share, however, missed the analysts' consensus of 91 cents per share, according to market data.

Uber also repurchased $750 million worth of shares in Q3 as the company's gross bookings also grew 20% YoY to $59.8 billion during the quarter.

Price Action: UBER shares were up 0.07% to $69.92 during overnight trading on Wednesday after the stock surged 4.91% to $69.87 at market close.