Uber has been a household name for the past few years, but surely, you can’t just have one ride-hailing app? Well Lyft agree and have published the first financials as a listed business.
Lyft, Inc. is a transportation network company based in San Francisco, California and operating in 640 cities in the United States and 9 cities in Canada. It develops, markets, and operates the Lyft mobile app, offering car rides, scooters, and a bicycle-sharing system.
Both companies are ride hailing; San Fran based and are floated on the stock market (Initial public offerings filed on the same day). They also share in the mind-set they will secure a market monopoly, and both have losses which would make your eyes water.
In its first quarter as a public company they announced “record” first quarter results. “First quarter revenue grew to $776 million, up 95% year-over-year”.
$1.14bn loss for 2018
Despite the fact the revenue is sound, Lyft, like Uber, is struggling with its IPO: shares initially were offered at $72 when the company went public, but this has dropped and as at 15/05/2019 was at $52.
So how can a tech giant survive with such titanic losses, simple the revenue is still coming in and they will continue to accept investment, Xero have been operating at a loss from day one and are now increasing their marketing if anything. The good news for Lyft is that Uber’s first results as a public company are inbound shortly, and if you think Lyft’s numbers are bad, it’s likely that its big rival’s will be much worse.