While it’s perfectly normal for a nascent company to lose money as it fights to gain market traction, Uber has stretched that principle to its limit. In 2016, the then-seven-year-old ride-sharing giant burned a whopping $2.8 billion, and a report published in March showed Uber had spent a staggering $10.7 billion over the past nine years—far more than any other tech company. Its stratospheric costs have been mitigated somewhat by its massive venture-capital-funded war chest, but every year Uber fails to turn a profit increases the risk that impatient investors could throw in the towel. Which is why Uber’s new quarterly earnings report is, ostensibly, good news: after the markets closed on Wednesday, the company announced that in the first quarter of 2018 it earned $2.6 billion in revenue (up from $2.4 billion at the end of 2017) and, most notably, turned a $2.5 billion profit.

Yet in an ironic twist, the famously cutthroat company’s profitability is largely thanks to its global surrender. Last year, after former C.E.O. Travis Kalanick stepped down, Uber announced plans to merge its Russia operation with Yandex, the Russian search giant that also has its own ride-hailing service in the country. Earlier this year, Uber agreed to sell its Southeast Asian ride and food-delivery businesses to local rival Grab, based in Singapore. Both the Russia and Southeast Asia deals closed in the first months of 2018, raking in a total of $2.9 billion and boosting the company into the black.

Without the deals, Uber would have posted a loss, albeit one far lower than in previous quarters. In the first quarter of 2017, Uber lost $800 million; in the last quarter of 2017, it lost $1.1 billion. Its losses in the first quarter of 2018 are paltry by comparison: a mere $480 million, excluding profits from its merged businesses abroad. The slowdown is thanks to a decrease in spending on subsidizing rides through driver incentives and promotions, and a simultaneous increase in bookings. C.E.O. Dara Khosrowshahi also revealed a new tender offer from investment funds Coatue, Altimeter, and TPG, which would value the company at $62 billion—a figure below the company’s previous $69 billion valuation, but significantly higher than SoftBank’s $48 billion valuation earlier this year, which many saw as a metaphorical slap in the face.

There’s some precedent for Uber’s move away from international expansion: in 2016, after Kalanick called taking over China his “number-one priority,” the company waved the white flag, announcing it would sell Uber China to local rival Didi Chuxing. The sale created a new new entity worth $35 billion, of which Uber retained a 20 percent stake—it also resulted in a profit for Uber in the third quarter of 2016. (According to The New York Times, investors had been keen on the deal.) But on the whole, the Khosrowshahi-driven retreat represents a change in ethos for a company that for years was known for its rapid global expansion and cutthroat tactics, which included trampling local laws and regulations, and even sabotaging its rivals.

Those means worked for Kalanick—at least until he was forced out by Uber’s board. But they won’t fly in a public market, which is where Khosrowshahi is hoping to steer his new charge. “We have all of the disadvantages of being a public company, as far as the spotlight on us, without any of the advantages,” he said at the New York Times DealBook conference just a few months into his new job, adding that he’d like the company to go public by 2019. Perhaps in preparation, Khosrowshahi has instituted a handful of new policies in recent weeks, including abolishing the company’s forced-arbitration clause, eliminating the log of people’s exact pickup and drop-off locations previously accessible to drivers, and developing several new safety features, all to the benefit of the customer. It’s less likely, however, that continued profitability will be part of the company’s makeover—Khosrowshahi indicated to investors in Uber’s most recent earnings call that he’ll continue to invest in other areas, meaning 2018’s first earnings report will likely prove the exception to the rule.