Earnings Results: Lyft ridership hits pandemic high, but stock falls on disappointing forecast

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Lyft Inc. said Tuesday that it met its goal of full-year positive Ebitda, and that its fourth quarter was “solid,” but its outlook for the current quarter weighed on its stock in after-hours trading.

Chief Financial Officer Elaine Paul said on her first earnings call with the company that although Lyft’s ride volume reached a pandemic high during the fourth quarter, she expects first-quarter volume to fall slightly because of the omicron variant’s effects on rides demand.

Lyft
LYFT,
+5.37%

shares fell as much as 6.5% after hours, after rising 5.4% in the regular session to close at $41.20. 

Lyft said it had adjusted Ebitda of $74.7 million, slightly beating analysts’ expectation of $74 million. The company said it had 18.74 million riders in the quarter, a 49.2% increase year over year but short of analysts’ expectations of 20.2 million riders. Lyft’s revenue per rider was $51.79, above the $46.50 per rider analysts had expected.

The ride-hailing company reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $258.6 million, or 75 cents a share, compared with a loss of $458.2 million, or $1.43 a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted for stock-based compensation and insurance-liability expenses, earnings were $32.1 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with an adjusted net loss of $185.3 million in the year-ago period. Revenue rose to $969.9 million from $569.9 million in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast earnings of 8 cents a share on revenue of $941.4 million.

For the full year, the company reported a loss of $1.01 billion, or $3.02 a share, on revenue of $3.21 billion. That compares with a $1.75 billion loss the previous year. Analysts had expected an adjusted loss of 20 cents a share on revenue of $3.18 billion.

Lyft expects first-quarter revenue in the range of $800 million to $850 million, a decline from the previous quarter. The company expects adjusted Ebitda of between $5 million and $15 million, compared with $75 million in the fourth quarter. Analysts had forecast earnings of 7 cents a share on revenue of $980.3 million.

Shares of Lyft have fallen 4.35% so far this year, while the S&P 500 Index
SPX,
+0.84%

has decreased 5.25%.

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