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Lyft Inc. said Tuesday that it will sublease nearly half of the office space in its corporate offices in four cities because many of its employees are on flexible working arrangements.
The ride-hailing company will be putting 275,000 of 615,000 square feet on the sublease market in its San Francisco headquarters, plus New York City, Nashville and Seattle, a spokeswoman said, confirming news reported earlier by Bloomberg.
Rachel Goldstein, a Lyft
LYFT,
vice president, said in a statement that the company is acting in response to an increase in underused space. “While we continue to believe that in-person connections are important, many of our team members opted to work remotely after we shifted to a flexible workplace strategy,” she said, referring to the company’s announcement in March that it was shifting to a “fully flexible workplace” for its roughly 4,000 employees.
The company is kicking off its subleasing efforts with brokers this week, a Lyft spokeswoman said. Lyft will continue to adapt its real-estate strategy as its needs change, she said.
Like other big companies lately, Lyft has been in cost-cutting mode. In May, when its stock hovered near all-time lows, the company announced that it would be cutting budgets and slowing hiring. It also has been under pressure to turn a profit and has emphasized to investors that being disciplined about costs is one of the ways it plans to do so.
Shares of Lyft have decreased 64% so far this year, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has fallen about 13% year to date.
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Also: Lyft stock rises as riders, drivers and rides hit highest points since pandemic began
