Lyft had a solid fourth quarter: ‘we prefer Uber over Lyft’

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.

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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.