#Earnings Results: Lyft more than doubles revenue, adds millions more riders during ‘exceptional’ quarter

The company had said it expected to achieve adjusted Ebitda profitability in the third quarter, but it reported adjusted Ebitda profit of $23.8 million in the second quarter.

“We beat our outlook across every metric and we have growing momentum,” said
Logan Green, the ride-hailing giant’s co-founder and chief executive, in a news release. On the earnings call, Green attributed reaching the adjusted-profitability milestone to adjustments the company made to its business during the pandemic, and said he expects Lyft to maintain Ebitda profitability.

In an additional sign of an economic recovery, the San Francisco-based company saw increased traffic at airports — more than double that from January and up nearly quadruple year over year, Green said.

Chief Financial Officer Brian Roberts said on the call that the company is keeping an eye on developments around the COVID-19 delta variant, but that “despite recent growth in COVID case counts, July was our best month since March 2020.”

“Investors will be focused on any early signals that the delta variant is negatively impacting demand, but it sounds quite positive thus far” with rides volume increasing, said Tom White, analyst with D.A. Davidson.

After falling 1.1% in the regular session to close at $55.38, Lyft shares seesawed after hours, rising as much as 6% after hours but paring most of their gains after the earnings call. Shares of competitor Uber Technologies Inc.
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-1.61%
also rose nearly 3% in extended trading but gave back much of those gains.

Lyft reported a net loss of $251.9 million, or 76 cents a share, compared with a loss of $437.1 million, or $1.41 a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted for stock-based compensation and other costs, the company’s loss was $18 million, or 5 cents a share. Revenue more than doubled to $765 million from $339.3 million in the year-ago quarter.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast a loss of 24 cents a share on revenue of $700 million.

Lyft expects third-quarter revenue of $850 million to $860 million, while analysts on average had forecast revenue of $869.1 million. Roberts said on the call that the company expects prices for rides to be lower but that Lyft will continue to invest in incentives to attract and retain drivers. Lyft expects adjusted Ebitda profitability of $25 million to $35 million for the third quarter and full-year Ebitda profitability as well, he added.

The company is expecting the expiration of additional federal unemployment benefits in September, plus a continued increase in vaccinations, to also help with driver supply, its top executives said.

John Zimmer, co-founder and president of Lyft, talked about the company’s announcement of a deal with Ford Motor Co.
F,
+0.79%
and Argo AI last month on a self-driving network that will offer passengers rides in Miami this year and Austin beginning next year. “The path to commercialization of self-driving vehicles at scale is through the Lyft network,” he said on the call.

Lyft stock is up nearly 11% year to date, and has increased about 79% in the past year. By comparison, the S&P 500 Index
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+0.82%
has risen 17% so far this year, and is up about 33% in the past 52 weeks.