Lyft Q1 Earnings Preview: First Quarterly Report As A Public Company

Lyft Inc (NASDAQ: LYFT) became a public company in March and is scheduled to report its first-quarter results after Tuesday's market close.

What To Know

Street analysts are modeling Lyft to report a loss of $978 million -- on an adjusted basis, a loss of about $274.1 million, or $3.77 a share -- on revenue of $740 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. By comparison, the company lost $911.3 million in the same quarter last year on roughly half the revenue.

Investors will be paying attention to Lyft's rider metrics, which WSJ said tripled in size throughout the two-year period ending 2018. But daily active riders growth slowed down as of late, rising 6.9 percent between the third quarter of 2018 and the fourth quarter.

What The Pros Said

Lyft's journey from IPO to earnings spanned a few short weeks and some experts haven't shied away from offering a cautious outlook.

Aswath Damodaran said on CNBC's "Fast Money" in early April Lyft is a business which not only lost $1 billion last year but "hasn't figured out" how to make money today. As such, the stock's $15 billion valuation ahead of its IPO was already a "stretch" while a hypothetical $25 billion valuation in the future is "way beyond stretching."

Lyft's "growth at any cost strategy" needs to be measured by profitability, Foundation Capital General Partner Steve Vassallo told CNBC in late April. The problem for Lyft is future earnings could show a slowdown in growth to the 50 percent range after a few years of doubling and tripling.

"I think we have to accept slower growth but we have to get to profitability," he said. "That's a big question."

Lyft's stock closed Monday at $60.57 per share.

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Photo courtesy of Lyft.