Dive Brief:
- Lyft had 21.5 million active riders as of June 30, 8.2% higher than the same period last year, according to its second-quarter 2023 earnings report, issued Tuesday.
- Despite cost-cutting measures, the ride-hailing company reported a net loss of $114.3 million in the quarter. Competitor Uber reported its first-ever operating profit for the quarter last week.
- With Uber’s share of the ride-hailing market nearly three times that of Lyft’s, according to Bloomberg Second Measure, some analysts see Lyft as ripe for acquisition by another company.
Dive Insight:
Unlike Uber — which, along with ride-hailing, provides food delivery and freight brokerage and logistics services — Lyft relies almost entirely on ride-hailing. It operates bike and scooter rentals in several cities, but micromobility “is still a relatively small portion of our overall business,” Lyft Chief Financial Officer Erin Brewer said on the call.
For that business segment, Lyft may be looking to sell or bring in a strategic partner. Risher seemed to confirm the latter is under consideration in the earnings call. “We’ve gotten nice incoming interest in partnerships [with] companies that really understand city-level infrastructure, and so we’re in conversations, but [we have] nothing more to report,” he said.
Risher said the number of drivers on its app grew more than 20% in the quarter year over year, helping to reduce the volume of rides with higher surge-pricing costs. He pointed to changes in the bonus program for drivers and an option for drivers to only accept rides within a certain radius of their location to avoid being taken far from their home area as moves the company has taken to attract more drivers.
Lyft is also slowly growing its non-emergency healthcare transportation business, which helps people get to doctors and treatment services more readily, Risher said.
Lyft’s investors are awaiting management’s long-term plan for the company. While Brewer said on the call that Lyft anticipates ride-hailing growth to continue at about 20% in the third and fourth quarters of the year, she said they would announce their long-term targets “around the time of our Q4 results.”
