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Lyft Inc. attracted fewer customers in the third quarter than Wall Street expected, but record-high ride-hailing prices sent the company to its highest quarterly revenue ever anyway, executives said Monday.
Lyft
LYFT,
shares fell more than 8% in after-hours trading immediately following the release of the results, after rising almost 3% in the regular session to close at $14.14.
The ride-hailing company reported seeing its highest numbers of active riders, rides and drivers since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, though its 20.3 million riders in the third quarter fell short of analysts’ expectation of 21.2 million. Revenue per active rider climbed to a record high of $51.88, up 4% from the previous quarter and an increase of 14% year over year. That blew past analysts’ expectations of $49.40.
“We had a lot of challenging execution that we had to pull off over the last few years,” Lyft co-founder and President John Zimmer told MarketWatch in an interview Monday. “That’s behind us.”
The company announced last week that it was laying off 13% of its workforce, or almost 700 people, which Zimmer said was a “proactive move to make sure 2023 is a year we could focus on execution.” Lyft did not change its forecasts and is guiding for fourth-quarter results that are in line with analyst expectations.
Lyft’s third-quarter revenue rose to $1.05 billion from $864 million in the year-ago quarter, though it reported a net loss of $422 million, or $1.18 a share, compared with a loss of $99 million, or 30 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted net income was $36.7 million, or 10 cents a share.
The company attributed much of its loss to $224.1 million in stock-based compensation and a $135.7 million charge related to the shutdown of Argo AI, the autonomous-vehicle startup that was backed by Ford Motor Co.
F,
and Volkswagen AG
VOW,
in which Lyft had a small stake. Lyft and Argo had an agreement to test autonomous ride-hailing.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast a net loss of $171 million, or 49 cents a share, and adjusted earnings of 7 cents a share on revenue of $1.06 billion.
Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) was $66.2 million compared with $67.3 million in the year-ago quarter, and above the $62 million analysts had expected. For Lyft, Ebitda excludes interest expenses, insurance-liability costs and more
The company expects fourth-quarter revenue to be between $1.145 billion and $1.165 billion, and adjusted Ebitda of $80 million to $100 million. Analysts are forecasting a loss of 40 cents a share on revenue of $1.16 billion, and Ebitda of $85 million.
Shares of Lyft have declined 67% so far this year, while the S&P 500 index
SPX,
has fallen about 20% year to date.
