Lyft plunges 20% as analysts say earnings confirm market share losses to Uber By Investing.com

By Senad Karaahmetovic

Shares of LYFT (NASDAQ:) are down over 19% in pre-open Tuesday trading after the company reported third-quarter results and issued guidance.

Lyft reported an adjusted net income of $36.7 million, beating the $28.1M consensus. came in at $1.05B, slightly below the $1.06B analyst estimate. The number of active riders jumped over 7% to 20.31M, but still below the consensus of 21.1M.

“We have taken decisive steps to ensure we can deliver profitable growth, and we are even more confident in our ability to achieve our 2024 financial targets,” said Logan Green, co-founder and CEO of Lyft.

For this quarter, Lyft guided to revenues of $1.155B at the midpoint of its range, slightly below the $1.16B consensus. The adjusted Ebitda is expected at $90M, again missing the consensus of $91.7M.

Overall, sell-side analysts weighed in negatively on Lyft’s results as they pretty much confirmed that the business is losing market share to rival Uber (NYSE:).

Evercore ISI analysts admitted the firm has been “on the wrong side of this one,” prompting them to downgrade Lyft shares to In Line from Outperform despite a “very reasonable” valuation. The price target is cut by over 50% to $18 per share.

“Our Long Thesis was based on our belief that LYFT’s fundamentals would benefit as a late-cycle rideshare recovery name. We believed that the company’s substantial exposure to West Coast markets and to Shared Rides would power strong Rider and Revenue recovery in H2:22. This may still happen and there may simply be a delay here, but the notably weak growth in Q3 Active Riders is very concerning to us,” they explained in a client note.

BTIG analysts said the active rider shortfall and below-consensus revenue guide are “likely points of pushback.” The analysts also estimate that gross revenue before driver incentives rose in single digits year-over-year.

“Those three factors are likely to feed into investor concern around market share and post-pandemic category growth prospects,” the analysts wrote in a note.

Lyft shares were down about 70% heading into the Q3 results.