Ride-hailing service Lyft's annual loss more than doubled last year to over $2.6 billion, but the company claimed progress as revenue jumped 68% and ridership grew.
The San Francisco company is predicting another big revenue gain for this year, with a narrower pretax loss of $450 million to $490 million.
But in results released after the markets closed Tuesday, Lyft ($LYFT) isn't predicting a fourth-quarter profit this year like Uber, its main rival.
“We significantly improved our path to profitability while simultaneously reaching critical milestones toward our long-term strategy,” CEO Logan Green said in a statement.
Annual revenue was $3.62 billion, up from 2.16 billion in 2018, the company said.
The annual net loss included $1.6 billion in stock-based compensation and payroll tax expenses, plus $270.3 million in charges for insurance liabilities, Lyft said.
For the fourth quarter, Lyft lost $356 million compared with a $248.9 million loss a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, the company lost 41 cents per share. That beat Wall Street estimates of a 53-cent per-share loss, according to FactSet.
Revenue for the quarter was just over $1 billion, up 52% from $669.5 billion a year ago. That also beat estimates of $984.1 million.
Uber, Lyft's main ride-hailing rival, also continues to lose money, but Uber is now predicting a profit in the fourth quarter of this year, CEO Dara Khosrowhsahi said earlier this month on a conference call.
That's sooner than the projection during the previous earnings call when he said the company would turn a full-year profit in 2021 as the company grows ride-hailing revenue, expands its food delivery business and develops autonomous vehicle technology.
Uber lost $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019, about 24% worse than the same time last year. But revenue for its rides business nearly tripled in the final three months of last year as the company picked up more passengers around the world.
Khosrowshahi said the era of growth at all costs is over for Uber.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
