Ahead of Uber earnings, these may be most important levels to watch

Uber is gearing up for earnings after the bell today, its third release since going public.

The stock — a poster child in the shift in appetite for unprofitable IPOs — has fallen 7% in just a week.

Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak, says there are a few critical levels Uber investors need to watch for after this report.

“There are some definitive lines I think that we could keep an eye on and that’s the recent high and the recent low,” Maley said on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday. “On the resistance side, if you get above $35 which is its recent high, and the earnings can be a catalyst for that, that’s certainly going to be positive. It’s going to give investors a lot more confidence in the name, and probably squeeze a few shorts.”

Uber briefly traded above $35 in early September. It has not traded firmly above this level since August.

“On the negative side, however, if [Uber] rolls back over and the earnings are a catalyst for a dive in the stock and it drops below $28.50, its recent lows, basically its lows since it went public, that’s going to be a big problem because I think it leaves a lot of people just throwing the towel on the name,” said Maley.

The company has more than its fair share of difficulties on the fundamental side, according to Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management.

“It’s basically an unsustainable economic model as it’s run right now and the great hope of self-driving cars is pretty much a pipe dream at this point. Technology and the compliance liability issues are still very far away. I think it’s very difficult to imagine a strong fundamental case for Uber,” Schlossberg said during the same segment.

There could be an even more crucial catalyst beyond earnings in the next few days, he adds.

“The one thing that investors should really remember is that you have a lockup period coming up in two days … Look at the history of the recent stocks – Beyond beat its number, the lockup destroyed the stock. Lyft actually did better, the lockup destroyed the stock and there’s a lot of supply coming out of Uber,” he said.

Uber’s post-float lockup period expires on Wednesday, November 6. Once this happens, initial investors can unload approximately 763 million shares.

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