Lyft Inc (NASDAQ: LYFT) on Tuesday said it had a solid fourth quarter that helped hit its target of full-year positive EBITDA. Shares, however, slipped just under 10% after-hours on dovish guidance for the future.
Notable figures in Lyft’s Q4 earnings report
Lyft reported $74.7 million in adjusted EBITDA versus $74 million expected. 18.74 million riders in Q4 represented a massive 49.2% YoY increase but still missed experts’ forecast of 20.2 million. as per the earnings press release.
On the earnings call, CFO Elaine Paul said ride volume in the recent quarter hit a pandemic high, but warned of a slight slowdown in Q1 due to Omicron. On CNBC’s “Closing Bell”, Needham’s Bernie McTernan said:
The major thing is that riders are down slightly sequentially. Consensus was for it to be up 9.0%. We actually cut our numbers; we have a mobility supply tracker and saw prices go down earlier this year and that told us that there was a demand problem in the industry.
The ride-hailing company earned 9 cents a share (adjusted) on $969.9 million in sales – an annualised growth of 70%. The FactSet consensus was for 8 cents of adjusted EPS and $941.4 million in revenue. Lyft said its revenue per rider printed at $51.79 beating analysts’ estimates of $46.50.
Lyft’s guidance for the current quarter
For the current quarter, Lyft forecasts up to $850 million in revenue and $5 million to $15 million in adjusted EBITDA – both below estimates. McTernan added:
A big takeaway from the pandemic for the ride-sharing companies is that they have a lot of pricing power. Consumer are showing a willingness to absorb that inflation. We’ll more about it at Uber’s investor day on Thursday. We prefer Uber over Lyft; it’s our top pick for 2022.
A day earlier, UBS slashed its price target on LYFT from $60 to $46 that represents a 20% upside from here.
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