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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 and possibly beyond weighed on its stock in after-hours trading.
Chief Financial Officer Elaine Paul, who joined the company last month, said on her first earnings call 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 demand.
Based on demand trends in the fourth quarter, “prior to omicron, we were anticipating strong sequential ride-share ride growth in Q1,” Paul said. She also indicated that the second quarter might be affected by “the unknown pace of the recovery.”
Lyft
LYFT,
shares fell as much as 6.5% after hours, after rising 5.4% in the regular session to close at $41.20. Its bigger competitor, Uber Technologies Inc.
UBER,
which is scheduled to report earnings Wednesday, also saw its stock fall about 1.5% in extended trading after closing more than 2% higher at $38.34.
Paul did add that she’s cautiously optimistic about the company’s full-year outlook, something Chief Executive Logan Green also mentioned on the call.
“The demand rebound is a matter of when, not if,” Green said. “We are getting better and better at managing these temporary COVID-related spikes, and this time around, driver supply has remained healthy.”
Lyft said total active drivers in the fourth quarter increased 34% year over year, and that new-driver activations rose 50%.
The company said it had adjusted Ebitda of $74.7 million, slightly beating analysts’ expectation of $74 million. It had 18.74 million active riders in the quarter, a 49.2% increase year over year but short of analysts’ expectations of 19 million riders.
Lyft’s revenue per rider was $51.79, above the $46.50 per rider analysts had expected. That was partly due to ride frequency and longer trips, Paul said on the call. In a further indication of a recovery, she said airport rides are now 9% of ride volume, just shy of 9.4% of volume in the pre-pandemic fourth quarter of 2019.
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,
has decreased 5.25%.
