Lyft's first-quarter revenue tops expectations

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Lyft (LYFT), in its first quarterly report as a public company, exceeded Wall Street’s expectations for top-line growth while guiding toward a widening loss.

The San Francisco-based ride sharing company posted an adjusted loss of $9.02 per share on revenue of $776 million for the quarter, nearly doubling revenues from the year-ago quarter. A consensus estimate of Wall Street analysts expected Lyft to post an adjusted loss of $3.97 per share share on revenue of $738.5 million, according to Bloomberg-compiled estimates. However, expectations for Lyft’s first-quarter adjusted loss fluctuated widely in the days leading up to the report.

Shares of Lyft fell 7.15% to $55.16 each as of 11:17 a.m. on Wednesday.

“The first quarter was a strong start to an important year, our first as a public company,” Logan Green, Lyft co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Our performance was driven by the increased demand for our network and multi-modal platform, as Active Riders grew 46% and revenue grew 95% year-over-year. Transportation is one of the largest segments of our economy and we are still in the very early stages of an enormous secular shift from personal car ownership to Transportation-as-a-Service.”

Active riders and revenue per active rider – two proxies of growth for the ride-hailing company – each exceeded expectations in the first quarter. Active riders grew 46% year-over-year to 20.5 million, and revenue per active rider increased 34% to $37.86.

Lyft’s guidance for the current quarter and full year also jumped ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. The company sees full-year revenue totaling $3.27 billion to $3.3 billion, beating consensus estimates of $3.26 billion. For the fiscal second quarter, Lyft sees revenues of $800 million and $810 million, higher than the $782.2 million expected.

However, the guidance implies a slowdown in revenue growth, with second-quarter guidance indicating just a 60% year-over-year increase on the high end. Revenue grew 111% in the second quarter of 2018, but company management noted during a call with investors Tuesday that last year’s second quarter results received a boost from the timing of an industry-wide price increase.

FILE- In this March 29, 2019, file photo a sign for Lyft is displayed on a car in Los Angeles. Lyft gave investors a lesson in how quickly a company’s market value can change. The ride-hailing company’s stock surged more than 20% from its IPO price on Friday. But by the first hour of Lyft’s second day of trading, the stock had fallen below the IPO price of $72. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)
Lyft's stock surged more than 20% from its IPO price the day that shares opened for trading. But by the first hour of Lyft’s second day of trading, the stock had fallen below the IPO price of $72. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu, File)

Lyft is also guiding toward steeper losses in the quarters to come. Lyft sees adjusted operating losses of between $270 million and $280 million for the fiscal second quarter, wider than the $216 million loss in the first quarter. For the full-year, adjusting operating losses are expected to total between $1.15 billion and $1.175 billion.

On a call with investors Tuesday, Lyft CFO Brian Roberts said the company is on a “clear path to profitability” and anticipates that 2019 will be the company’s “peak loss year” before moving steadily toward a profit on a consolidated basis.