Lyft Q1 2026 Earnings Report

Lyft EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.04
• Consensus EPS: $0.30
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$0.26
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.01

Lyft Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $1.65 billion
• Expected Revenue: $1.63 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$19.51 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +17.20%

Lyft Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2026
• Date: 5/7/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 7, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) (NASDAQ: LYFT) operates a peer-to-peer ridesharing platform that connects passengers with drivers through a mobile application. Since its founding in 2012, the company has expanded beyond traditional ride-hailing to include bike and electric scooter rentals, while also offering rental cars and public transit options in select markets. Lyft’s platform uses GPS mapping and dynamic pricing algorithms to optimize driver-passenger matches and route efficiency.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Lyft primarily serves urban and suburban markets across the United States and Canada. The company organizes its operations into local markets to tailor offerings such as shared rides, luxury vehicle options, and wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Lyft has also invested in partnerships with public transit agencies to integrate train and bus schedules into its app, aiming to position itself as a comprehensive mobility network company.

Co-founded by Logan Green and John Zimmer, Lyft went public in March 2019. In April 2023, David Risher was appointed Chief Executive Officer, bringing experience from leading consumer technology businesses. Under this leadership team, Lyft has focused on achieving profitability through cost controls, diversification of revenue streams, and strategic partnerships with rental car companies, automakers, and transit authorities.

Lyft continues to prioritize safety and sustainability, implementing features like in-app emergency assistance, driver background checks, and carbon offset programs. With ongoing investments in autonomous vehicle research and multimodal transportation solutions, the company aims to meet evolving urban mobility needs while strengthening its competitive position in the ride-hailing industry.

Lyft Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Strong Q1 financials: Gross bookings were up ~19% YoY, adjusted EBITDA up ~25% YoY, the last 12 months produced a record $1.12B of free cash flow, Lyft executed a $300M share repurchase in Q1 and guided to ~20% gross bookings growth and >30% adjusted EBITDA growth at the midpoint.
• Positive Sentiment: Partnerships are driving growth: Partnership-tagged rider requests reached ~27% (up from ~20% historically), with partners like DoorDash and United supplying both high-frequency users and higher‑value airport/business rides plus features like Pay with Miles to deepen engagement.
• Neutral Sentiment: AV and international expansion progressing but varied timelines: Lyft is operating in 120+ countries, closed the Gett U.K. deal, is building a Waymo AV depot in Nashville (operations takeover this summer), and is advancing Baidu-led efforts in London and a city program in Hamburg — bullish on AVs but rollout timing differs by city.
• Positive Sentiment: Mix shift and margin tailwinds: Higher‑value modes (Black, chauffeuring, TBR), taxi/Freenow and ad revenue are causing gross bookings to outpace rides and improving margin profile; management expects rides to accelerate into Q2 (seasonal bike recovery and California reforms noted) toward a goal of >1B rides for 2026.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon, and welcome to Lyft's first quarter 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. On the call today, we have Chief Executive Officer, David Risher, and our Chief Financial Officer, Erin Brewer. Our full prepared remarks are available on the IR website, and we'll use this time to answer your questions. We'll make forward-looking statements on today's call, including statements relating to our business strategy and performance, partnerships, future financial and operating results, trends in our marketplace, and guidance. These statements are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied during this call. These factors and risks are described in our earnings materials and in our recent SEC filings.

[Operator]

All of the forward-looking statements that we make today's call are based on beliefs as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Additionally, today we're going to discuss customers. For rideshare in North America, there are generally two customers in every car, the driver's Lyft customer and the rider is the driver's customer. We care about both. Our discussion today will also include non-GAAP financial measures, which are not a substitute for GAAP results. Reconciliation of our historical GAAP to non-GAAP results can be found in our earnings materials, which are available on our IR website. With that, I'll pass the call to David.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Thank you, Erin. Hello, everyone. Listen, Q1 represented another strong quarter for Lyft. We again delivered on our financial commitments and again had double-digit growth in active riders, gross bookings, and adjusted EBITDA year-over-year, further setting ourselves up for a global hybrid AV future. Rideshare demand remained healthy. We saw double-digit rides growth around peak events like Valentine's Day, Super Bowl Sunday, St. Patrick's Day. Stepping back, our share of the U.S. rideshare market has grown from the three years ago when I joined, and has held above that point ever since, with an increase in Q1 over last quarter. In March, we delivered our highest ever number of rides in a week. Taken together with our financial results, this continues to validate our thesis that customer obsession drives profitable growth.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Looking globally, we're now operating in over 120 countries around the world and have further deepened our presence in London with our acquisition of Gett's U.K. business, which we just officially closed this week. Finally, we took significant steps forward with our partner Waymo in Nashville with the construction of a state-of-the-art AV depot. We continue to be extremely bullish about AV's ability to expand our market and about our own capacity to operate them at industry-leading utilization levels, the ultimate driver of profitability. With that, let me turn it over to Erin to take you through a few financial highlights.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Thanks, David. The consistent execution David just described translated directly to strong financial results. In the first quarter, gross bookings were up 19% and adjusted EBITDA up 25% year-over-year. Over the last 12 months, we've generated a record $1.12 billion in free cash flow, and during Q1, we executed our largest quarterly share repurchase ever, totaling $300 million in the quarter. Looking forward, our guidance reflects continued momentum across the business. At the midpoint of our range, we expect gross bookings to accelerate to approximately 20% and adjusted EBITDA to expand by more than 30% year-over-year. With that, we'll take your questions.

[Operator]

Let's dive into Q&A. If you have joined via the Webex, please use the Raise Hand icon, which can be found at the bottom of your application. When you are called on, please unmute your line and ask your question. Please limit to one question. We'll now pause for a moment to assemble. Okay, first question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

[Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Okay, great. Hopefully you can hear me okay. wanted to dive into the partnerships and how they continue to evolve. What are the key learnings as these partnerships continue to build in their momentum and build in their duration in terms of them as stimulants of increased frequency on your platform or, stimulants of increased new rider growth on the platform more broadly? Would love to get a better sense of color there. Appreciate it.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure. Hey, Eric, it's David. I'll take it, maybe Erin will tag team on me a little bit here as well. Super good question, and I think I'm just gonna maybe reset the table for 1-second because I think the role of partnerships continues to be incredibly important to our current business and will be incredibly important in our AV business. How we perform as a partner, I think is actually a good predictor and how our partners perform is a good predictor of the future. Okay, to your question. We got a record number of rides this quarter, from partnership tagged rides, rider requests, about 27%, I think. That's a big deal. I think when we first started talking about this, we were at 20%, then 22%, then 25%, then 27%. Why? two reasons.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Number one, we partner with great organizations that have huge TAMs, right? If you look at some of our most recent ones, of course, DoorDash is still only about a year and a half old. United is more recent. Even Southwest Airlines through their credit card program. You know, these are enormous programs, they represent a huge opportunity for us to acquire new customers. And we'll come back to frequency in a second. Those customers are different, right? For example, DoorDash customers tend to be very heavy users, and you can understand this, right? People eat three times a day, and they tend to take rides relatively more often than others. You saw us obviously complete, you know, double down on that partnership by expanding that to Canada.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

You look at United Airlines. United Airlines is kind of a different vibe, right? They tend to be more business customers. They, you know, we out index in some of the United's big hubs, Chicago being a good example, where we had great growth this past year. They tend to be airport rides, not surprisingly, which means higher bookings per ride, which tends to mean higher profits. That's wonderful. How do we reward United customers? We give them miles, which they've done for years now. I think we're over 350 million rides, right around Excuse me, 350 mi awarded. 350 million mi awarded, right around there. That's a big deal. A couple of weeks ago, we announced Pay with Miles, which is amazing.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

I mean, that's literally, you know, I don't know how many billions of miles or hundreds of millions maybe United has banked, but this allows United, MileagePlus, customers to pay with, you know, with their miles on Lyft. That's wonderful. It's an industry first, and it deepens that relationship. You put all these things together and you get sort of a portfolio. Some tend to drive frequency and new customer acquisition a little bit more. Some tend to drive, you know, other behaviors that we kind of like airport rides and so forth. Super, super important. Maybe I'll talk about AV partners another time.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

I don't think that was the sort of core of your question, but We remain very committed to the sort of concept of sort of really developing the ecosystem, going deeper and deeper in the TAM, which is quite large.

[Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Thank you.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure.

[Operator]

Great. Next question will be Doug from JPMorgan.

[Analyst at JPMorgan]

Hi, this is Neeraj on for Doug. A couple of questions. One is on the SF commentary. I think you guys mentioned that you have continued to gain share and also saw rides increase by 20% in the ODD. Just curious, given, you know, Uber has said their CP They have gained CP in the last six months as well. Just trying to understand the share dynamics there. Like, are you gaining share from Waymo? Or, like, how does the share dynamics work there? The next one was, are you, have you started seeing any elasticity from the California insurance mandate? Yeah. Thank you.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure. Why don't I take the first half, and then Erin, you can take the second half. Broadly speaking, as we've said before, you know, we think AVs are an incredible positive for rideshare. Really it's because it's a great product, and therefore you would expect over time that's gonna bring new people, you know, onto the sort of into the rideshare ecosystem. When we look across sort of in aggregate all of the regions where AVs are in the marketplace, we've effectively held share pretty steady, you know. That's kind of a good scene because a good indication because it means that as new riders are coming on, still the whole, you know, the whole pie is growing. San Francisco, we're doing great. As we said, we actually had an increase.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

We've had nice growth in San Francisco. You know, these things are always multi-variable. We're also doing some marketing in San Francisco, so that, you know, is sort of a maybe confounding factor. We like what we see in San Francisco. I will say, you know, when I look at what the other guys say, you know, they maybe pick six months for a particular reason, I'm not sure. Broadly speaking, I feel pretty good about our position in SF.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Yeah. Happy to comment on California. On our previous earnings conference call, we talked about obviously the insurance reform in California that we expected to deliver great value to riders and to drivers. We further talked about how we expected that to translate into increasing demand over time and sort of gaining momentum in the back half of the year. I can sit here today and tell you that as we got into sort of February, March, and even in here to the second quarter, we are seeing that growth begin in California. That growth in the first quarter outpaced other top regions. We're starting to see those effects. We obviously look forward to that momentum continuing for the balance of the year.

[Analyst at JPMorgan]

Got it. Thank you both.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Thank you.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure.

[Operator]

Our next question will be Nikhil from Bernstein.

[Analyst at Bernstein]

Hey, thank you for taking the question. I wanted to ask about the rides growth and appreciate the call out in the letter. That's helpful. Thank you. The mid-single digit North America volume, if I'm reading it right, it looks like Canada is growing much faster, almost 50%. It'd be helpful if you could maybe just outline what you saw in the U.S. business on a ride volume basis, and I guess the big picture factors that maybe weighed on that in the quarter. It seems like it's decelerated over the last few quarters, just your perspective on what's happening there would be really helpful. Thank you.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Yeah, for sure. Hey, Nikhil. A couple things. I mean, let's just sort of maybe level set on the data and then talk about what we're seeing. On the data, we grew both in the U.S. and in Canada, to be super clear. No question Canada outgrew the U.S. I don't think it was quite to the degree you're talking about, but it was a very significant growth. I mean, we did grow something like 50% year-over-year in Canada. Might get that a little bit wrong. North America, let's think about that, and then the U.S. North America, huge region, of course. Super diverse, lot of geographies, and a lot of segments within those geographies.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

What we have seen is in Canada for sure, but also low-scale markets that we've been talking about for now, I don't know, six or seven quarters, that's where we are seeing our sort of outsized growth for sure. Low-scale markets, again, you can sort of imagine those as maybe the Milwaukees of the world or maybe the Pittsburghs, whatever it might be. Sometimes second and third-tier cities or even more rural areas where there's a huge amount of TAM, you know, left and it's sort of under-penetrated. Obviously in some of the cities, particularly the largest cities where rideshare has been active the longest, I would say the industry on average is seeing slightly lower rates of growth, or at least did see this past quarter.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

I think that's an industry thing, and it has a lot to do just with, you know, kind of S-curves and, you know, being in markets for a long, long time. Once you look at that, then you say, well, okay, how are you gonna re-accelerate growth in some of those markets? That's where some of the segments I think become so interesting. You've heard us talk, of course, about, you know, Lyft Silver, which addresses older people, who by the way, take a lot of rides. Even on our platform, once they become Silver members, they take a lot more rides. Lyft Teen are still a very, very new product. Huge opportunity there, one that obviously is sort of infinitely replenishing, you sort of might say.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

You look at the partnerships that we have in some major cities. DoorDash is a great, you know, Obviously, you know, they've got both urban and suburban footprint, but anyway, they've got a nationwide footprint. You look at United Airlines, they've got real hubs, and some of those hubs are where we're seeing really good growth. We saw, for example, double-digit growth in both New York and in San Francisco. Part of that, of course, is also some marketing, right? We're now really leaning into this idea of Check Lyft. What we find, and of course national studies show, is that when people check both apps, they tend to save money.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

That's a very powerful message, and frankly, one that favors us, both because of our pricing strategy and also, you know, if you're not even looking at our app, then how can you be saving money? There's a lot of room left there to go. When I kind of look across all those, I see a lot of vectors for growth. It's why we're saying, you know, our rides are gonna overall we're seeing, you know, acceleration in Q2 and beyond. Maybe I'll turn it over to Erin to talk a little bit about that, and then maybe some other things as well.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Sure. Yeah, I'll offer a little bit of color, Nikhil. You know, in our prepared remarks, we quantified the impact that we saw the weather in the first quarter had on our overall rides, roughly about three million rides. You can think about that as a little bit more than half of that being bikes, bike rides overall, obviously given the severity of the weather in the Northeast. Beyond that, I think it's important to highlight a couple of seasonal factors, right? We always have a deceleration naturally in the bikes business, Q4 to Q1. Same with Freenow. Those both seasonally accelerate into the second quarter. That in addition to a number of the areas that David just mentioned, I talked about California. We've got a very healthy marketplace right now as well.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Those are some of the underlying factors as we think about acceleration into Q2. Maybe zooming out a little bit more broadly, really nothing has changed as we think about our trajectory here in 2026 and our overall objective to deliver north of a billion rides for the full year.

[Analyst at Bernstein]

Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Next question will be Ben from Deutsche.

[Ben Black, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. The theme this quarter has been AI productivity and the investments that companies are making into tokens, for instance. I'm wondering how you think philosophically about, you know, balancing the need to maintain your improving margin trajectory today versus growing talent and also investing in these tools to support productivity. Secondly, you know, I'd be curious to hear what you're seeing in the market this quarter that required you to increase incentives per ride by 17%. Could you maybe touch on that as well, please?

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure. Again, we'll sort of tag team this. I mean, maybe just state the obvious. Yeah, I mean, AI is amazing. It's just and it's rolling through our org just like every other org. You know, it's sort of lightning pace. I was looking at AI adoption recently just among the developers, our engineers, and just with a new tool, we have a strategic relationship with Claude, and a new tool has gotten to 80%-some adoption over the course of, whatever, 35 days, 45 days. AI, the code generation tool there. Anyway, you know, amazing. How we think about it, I know you asked specifically about the cost of tokens and so forth, just zooming out for a second, how we really think about it is AI builds capacity. It actually does two things.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

It builds capacity, it increases speed. Capacity and velocity. That's the way we think about it. We see examples of this all across the organization. You know, we've talked a couple different times about becoming a more global org. Gosh, when you become a more global org, you have to do all kinds of things around data and privacy and security and systems integration and so forth. You know, truthfully, a lot of that is not particularly customer value add, you just have to do it, our team has just been crushing it. A lot of the reasons they've been crushing it without having to hire a bunch of new people is we're relying on new AI tools that we've written internally or developed, you know, co-developed with others and so forth, that allows us to get things done.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Same with customer-facing things. We'll talk about that maybe another time. It's kind of a whole separate topic. Broadly speaking, I'd say we run a pretty lean ship, and what AI is allowing us to do is to move faster and to build capacity among our staff so that they can either be more productive or work on more things simultaneously, or what have you.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Sure. I'll take the question on incentives and sort of start with our usual line about, you know, incentives in this business, which fall in two places in our P&L. The contra revenue line and sales and marketing line are used dynamically in the marketplace to balance and optimize overall. You know, stepping back, that's why we always say that we are optimizing our P&L as we think about Gross Bookings, as we think about adjusted EBITDA. I think that's important context. Let's kind of get into the details on the incentive line. If you think about contra-revenue incentives overall, on a year-over-year basis, that's actually been a source of leverage. In the first quarter, we had our highest driver hours ever in the first quarter. You know, very strong engagement overall.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

We talked a little bit in the prepared remarks about our most recent driver preference survey. Again, super strong results. You see some leverage there in the contra revenue line. As I think about sales and marketing incentives, I think it's really important to chat about this from a P&L perspective. If you look at our performance in the quarter, you see strong revenue growth. You see gross margins expanding year-over-year. You know, I mentioned insurance being a point of leverage, so that's aided by that. We, of course, continue with our very disciplined fixed cost base. Why is all of that important to incentive? Because those are the things that can continue to allow us to invest when we see great return opportunities to invest in that rider incentive line. We do it very deliberately.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

We do it very focused on what the ROI is over the long term. Some of that strong performance throughout our P&L gave us the opportunity to take advantage of some of those strong investment opportunities, especially at a time when the marketplace is performing so well. We delivered across all of our financial commitments. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of color about how we manage that piece in the quarter.

[Ben Black, Analyst at Deutsche Bank]

Great. Yes. Thank you.

[Operator]

Next question is John Blackledge with TD Cowen. John? Okay, John, we're gonna come back to you, okay? We're gonna go to Mike with MoffettNathanson.

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

Can you hear me? Okay.

[Operator]

Oh, wait.

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

Okay.

[Operator]

Oh, I can hear somebody. Is that John?

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

Yeah, sorry. Sorry. First time Zoom.

[Operator]

No, it's okay.

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

I'm kidding.

[Operator]

Oh

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

Two questions.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

First time Zoom call fan.

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

Yeah. Could you talk about the strength in the high value modes and how much runway there is for further penetration of total rides? Second question, would you expect this kind of divergence between GB growth and rides, volume growth to extend into the second half? Will the gap close a bit as we get through the second half? Thank you.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Let's we'll tag team on that one again. Lot of runway there, lot of or headroom maybe is a better way to say it. It's just, you know, this is an area where I would say Lyft maybe underinvested for some period of time, and now has completely made up for lost time, let's say. We're really focusing on improving the quality of the cars, the types of drivers. You know, some drivers who drive for Black and high value modes, we call those the Black XL, even XXL, actually a new product for big families. Anyway, the types of drivers, you know, we're sort of, let's say shifting towards a more professional set of drivers there. Of course, TBR also, you know, operates in the very high-end kind of chauffeur service as well.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Lots of growth there, and lots of runway ahead, I would say. It's been an area that over the last couple of quarters you've heard us talk about the acceleration, and we have, you know, big ambitions there, 'cause there's a lot of demand to fill with a high quality product.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Yeah, I'll take the one on gross bookings and rides growth rates. If you think about the dynamic there in the first quarter, there's a couple of different components. Obviously part of what you're seeing is this continuation of a very active shift toward higher value modes. We've been talking about that for a few quarters. The first quarter of that growth is up over 35% year-over-year. Obviously adding in the Freenow business, which carries a higher average gross bookings per ride is helpful. Then, separately, but correspondingly, we continue to diversify the things that add to our gross bookings, where there may not be a ride attached, things like ads and luxury, for example. Those are some of the dynamics that driving that.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

If you think about expectations for the second quarter, I do expect that delta between Gross Bookings growth and rides growth to narrow somewhat. You've got the significant seasonal expansion of the bikes business, I think is probably one of the main underlying drivers. It will narrow somewhat as you think about those trends from Q1 to Q2.

[John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen]

Thank you. Thanks.

[Operator]

Okay. Now we really are gonna take a question from Mike at MoffettNathanson.

[Analyst at MoffettNathanson]

Awesome. Thank you. It was nice knowing that it was coming. two if I can.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Time to prepare.

[Analyst at MoffettNathanson]

Yeah, I had time to prepare. It was gonna be the same questions anyways. Can we talk about pricing in the U.S. market? All inter quarter we get questions from clients about what the third party data shows for industry pricing, kind of head-scratching, kind of ramp. When we see this reported number, I know that there's some Freenow aspect on it, but can we maybe just simplify it, like point blank, what year-over-year pricing is for like a Lyft standard ride? I know there's a premiumization aspect, but just to kind of level set that, and any nuance around that would be really helpful. Another question. I'd love to hear how you're feeling about your ads business.

[Analyst at MoffettNathanson]

Maybe some updates on the run rate there and if anything's changed on your outlook for the future, if you're more optimistic or anything along those lines would be really great. Thank you so much.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

David, do you wanna start with the ads business?

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Totally

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Talk about pricing? Okay.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Erin and I are chuckling here at that. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, on ads. Ads, as we said, we've said we've talked about ads for a while I think, and talked about how, we were super pleased with sort of the run rate, the exit rate from last year. I think the sort of big picture that we have on this is, gosh, there's a lot of opportunity. The reason for it is, you know, advertisers are always looking for new ways to connect with customers. In an increasingly virtualized world where people are spending more and more time on their phones, the big open question is not, how do I do more virtual digital ads? I mean, that is a fairly well solved problem in a sense.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

What's really interesting is how do you actually connect that to the physical world? If you look at some of the campaigns we've done, we talked about Sephora last time, we talked about a Charles Schwab ad campaign this time that I think in our, in the prepared remarks. Actually, I think just today we're doing something with McDonald's. You know, you start to see some really interesting trends where people are literally changing behavior as a result of being in cars when they're seeing ads, kind of in real time. Oh, also, bikes here in San Francisco. Gemini's all over the bike system here, so same sort of deal. Of course, city, across all of New York City. A lot of opportunities there.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

When you start to look at the audience we have, which is a fairly large audience, talking about 50 million people plus, the question is, well, how can you take that audience and extend that? We're doing something called Audience Extension, which allows us to sort of extend beyond, you know, sort of our four walls. How can you take some of that same data and extend that beyond the in-car experience to, you know, off platform, you know, through The Trade Desk and through other, you know, ad brokers. There's just a lot of opportunity here.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

The, the person, you know, I call her up from time to time, the person who runs our ad group, Suzie Reider joined us from YouTube years ago, where she had run their ad business for many years, really started it and then kind of grew it to something quite big. We've got the same amount of conviction here. You know, it may not be quite the same size as YouTube. That would be impressive. Certainly we've got a lot of conviction. There's a lot of headroom ahead.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Mike, to talk about pricing, I appreciate the simplicity of your question, and I may somewhat frustrate you because, you know, as you know in following our business, it tends to be fairly complex, right? There are changes year-over-year as you think about the mix of our business in top markets or certain geographies which are going to carry higher average pricing. We've obviously been growing very significantly in low-scale markets. You've got some of that mix effect, which makes it probably not straightforward to give you the best answer. I would offer a couple of perspectives, though. I think if you look over a number of years, this industry generally does see some amount of price increases if you think about longer term trends over years.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Maybe over the near term, you know, what I can tell you is sequentially from Q4 to Q1, pretty stable overall. A couple of questions ago, one of the things I was trying to highlight as you think about our overall Gross Bookings and kind of the mix of that, it has evolved. It has evolved over time. We've, you know, we've talked about the significant growth of higher value modes in that mix, the addition of Freenow. We further talked about things like, you know, ads or our chauffeuring business, which contribute to Gross Bookings and have been growing obviously nicely, but don't carry the same rides component. Those are some of the areas. You know, sequentially, I would say overall pricing pretty stable as we think about Q4 to Q1, hopefully that's some helpful color.

[Analyst at MoffettNathanson]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Up next, we have Ken with Wells Fargo.

[Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Thank you. Can you hear me okay?

[Operator]

Yes.

[Analyst at Wells Fargo]

All right. Thank you. Can you maybe can you help me a little bit strategically understand, you've made several acquisitions, some in the kind of, some are geographic diversification, but others, you know, just it's not strictly in the rideshare business. Could you talk a little bit about how you see them all coming together strategically? What are, you know, what are the key, like, points of synergy? What beyond geographic expansion do those assets why are they better together? Maybe I would just put it that way simply.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Yeah. Let me, you know, take a stab at that. Maybe a little, just tiny bit of history, I guess. We were not a particularly acquisitive company for a period of time, I think there's a pretty obvious reason for why, it's 'cause we were kinda just getting our base business, you know, going strong. Last year, we made our first significant acquisition, at least as long as I've been here, with Freenow. That was definitely a rideshare acquisition. Of course, it's a, you know, taxi-focused, you know, kind of core rather than, you know, what's called PHV in Europe.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

It expanded our footprint, which is nice for geographic diversity, into nine new countries, and allowed us, in that case in particular strategically, also to build upon the government relations that a company that's been in the taxi business has had to have had for a long time, which is gonna be so important for AVs. I would look at much of our acquisition activity in Europe as important for geographic kind of diversity, but also for an AV future. You can see that with Gett as well, which just closed last week or this week actually. Gett is a, you know, well-respected, largely B2B taxi service in London.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

You know, as we mentioned kind of in the prepared remarks, between that and the FreeNow presence in London, we're on something north of 70%, maybe 80%, something like this, of the taxis that have apps in their cars, now have a Lyft app in the car. That's amazing because that allows us, you know, obviously access to a very, very important market, you know, Europe's biggest rideshare market, arguably one of the most interesting and important in the world. Again, if you think of our activity in London, you know, there's a short-term issue there of kind of wanting to build volume, in part because that's part of what we bring to the AV category, as well as government relations. Again, Gett actually directly works with governments, and then we've got good relations through FreeNow.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

I would say those are sort of the things. TBR is the other acquisition that we've announced recently, also in the rideshare space, but quite different. That's really a chauffeur space, you know, very, very high-end. I think that speaks to So we talk about this as up and out, right? Out is kind of the overseas piece, up is how can we strengthen our position in kind of higher end offerings. It's wonderful to have a very, very top tier. Perhaps you may know TBR, 'cause often they kind of service non-deal roadshows in the U.S. and abroad, 120 countries.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

you know, once you have a service level that is sort of marked at, you know, a 10 out of 10, that frankly brings your whole company up, and so many companies, of course, are now making, you know, good money in the high end. I think that's maybe that touches on the significant ones.

[Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Okay, next. Next question's gonna be from Ross with Barclays.

[Analyst at Barclays]

Great. This is a good follow on from that last answer. Can we just get an update on whether the FreeNow kind of like for like is growing? I think it was like flattish when you guys made that acquisition. I know we haven't anniversary-ed it, is the business growing? Are there any like early proof points of U.S. Lyft enthusiasts going to Europe and, you know, kind of, you know, whatever, adding to the FreeNow business that way. Any color there? Thank you.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

I'll start with the performance, and then David, do you wanna talk about what we've got coming up on the rider side? Ross, to answer your question directly, yes, the business is growing. You know, we talked about when we bought the business having about a $1 billion overall annual run rate, that we talked about that being on track as we closed last year. We anticipate growth as we look into 2026.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

On the second part, there we've just begun, but maybe I can give you kind of the arc of the project. Today what happens, you know, very directly, if you're a Lyft user and you open up the Freenow app in London, you'll get a notification saying If you open up the Lyft app, I'm sorry. You'll get a notification saying, you know, our partner Freenow is delivering rides here in Europe. You know, it's a fairly kind of basic integration. You know, just like that. We do some other small things as well with Chase and some other things.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Our vision for sure, and we can say now really by 2027, is that anywhere as a, as a rider on the Lyft app, the sort of Lyft ecosystem, you know, anywhere you are with that app and that we do business through Freenow or others, you'll be able to open that app and be able to get a ride anywhere you want. It'll be a much, much more tightly integrated experience that's happening over, you know, in 2027. That's always been kind of the plan when it started is step-by-step integration such that by 2027 we're able to debut that. Once that happens, of course, then you would expect the business, the growth of the business to be much more significant as a result of that work.

[Operator]

Okay, great. Next question is Chad with Oppenheimer.

[Analyst at Oppenheimer]

Hey, thanks. Could you maybe talk about the margin benefits of some of these higher value rides, as they become a larger share of overall rides and as well as taxi expansion into more cities? Thank you.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Sure. I'll take the margin profile. David, do you want to talk about taxi expansion overall? Absolutely as you think about the higher value mode mix of rides, all the way up to and including TBR and chauffeuring that David was just describing, they absolutely bring a higher overall margin profile to the business. The mix is not only helpful financially, but also gives riders a lot greater choice. What we're seeing is when we, when those are offered up, you know, we're definitely seeing behavior where that trade-up will happen. It's both satisfying rider needs and desires at that point in time, but also obviously increasing that mix is bringing in a healthier margin profile.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Yeah. I'm gonna give a shout-out to our Lyft Black in particular and then zoom back out. It's actually our highest rated ride mode. Highest rated ride mode. It is a great product. It's been a little bit under-marketed over the years, but as I say, we've both improved the quality of it, and you're starting to see maybe a little bit more uptake. If you're on the call and you haven't taken it, I highly recommend, and go ahead and pay with your United miles. Okay. The taxis. You know, one of our strategic priorities this year when we talk about our internal, kind of our internal framework for it, is expanding the platform.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

You know, you've seen some experiments we've done in a kind of small scale in St. Louis, then I would say much more significant scale in L.A. There'll be other cities beyond that. It's great because taxis carry their own insurance, so that's got sort of an interesting, slightly different financial profile than the, you know, typical rideshare. That's wonderful. Of course, taxis in Europe are a whole different thing, right? It's a much higher end product, a very predictable product in many countries, and has also higher bookings per ride typically just because of, again, the combination of regulation and it's seen as a little bit more of a luxury product than here in the U.S.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Yeah, when you look across our whole platform, I feel really good about our kind of building out a very strong foundation, that then ultimately, of course, will embrace AVs as well, and that's next to come.

[Operator]

Great. Next question will be Justin with KeyBank.

[Analyst at KeyBank]

Great. Thank you. This is Miles on for Justin. I wanted to ask about loyalty. I was wondering if you could just provide an update. I know it's pretty early on Lyft Cash Rewards. Maybe just a broader view. You know, you mentioned wanting to do more in loyalty, so how that fits in with the strategy and then, you know, along with Lyft Pink, and your existing offering there. Maybe just, you know, continuing on international expansion. You know, been pretty active in M&A in new geographies obviously. Do you think, you know, this puts you in a position where you can start organically entering new markets now that you have more of a portfolio in places like Europe, to bolster that expansion? Thank you.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure, Miles. Why don't I start with that one and then, and we'll see if Erin has anything to add or maybe not on this one. Oh, wait, I just totally spaced on your question. My apologies.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Loyalty.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Oh, loyalty. Yeah, of course. Of course. Okay. Right. Yeah, loyalty. We've made some real inroads in loyalty. This is a, an area, again, of the company where maybe we've been a little bit kinda silent 'cause we've been getting some things together behind the scenes. Here's what's happened. In the last, I think it was last August, we really started to lean into loyalty for our business riders. This is a really interesting program. We have not really had a good business product for some period of time when it came to a loyalty product. This was causing us some pain in the marketplace. What we did is we said, Well, let's come out with the best program that there is for rideshare. Full stop. Full stop.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Here it is, super clear. It's free. Okay, that's very important. It's 6% back, up to 8% back, depending on your mode. You also get points multipliers for United and Hilton and Alaska, if I'm not mistaken. That's great. I'm gonna say the free part one more time. It's because it's quite important. We have a competitor out there that sells something else, we sometimes talk about it as selling a time bomb. Hate to say it that way, you know, you sell something for free and then a couple of months later it starts to, it starts to charge you. We don't have that.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

We have a product that's a free product that gives you immediate rewards back for what we call our Managed Business Rewards program. We've learned a ton there. It's been, you know, quite successful. I mean, I forget the exact statistic, but it's significant. Maybe I can kind of find it as I'm talking here. It's been significant, it's grown very significantly and has some kind of interesting characteristics about how many more rides people take once they start to sign up. That's kind of been the basis of it. You also mentioned the Cash Rewards as something we're experimenting with on the consumer side. Super cool. Still relatively small, 'cause it's definitely in experimentation mode.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

What I think you can see is we're starting to put some energy in this area and, you know, this is a bit of a stay tuned story, but something that we've got some good stuff to talk about in the future.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Maybe I can add in some of the stats on Business Rewards. Overall. You know, if we think about sort of first time rides on rewards eligible business profiles, that grew 59% year-over-year. Those rewards eligible riders are taking 25% more Lyft rides per month. We're super excited about what we're seeing kind of in these early phases. You know, that tells us a lot about that we've got a great product overall. That people are finding value in it. They're taking more airport trips. A little bit more on the stats.

[Analyst at KeyBank]

Awesome.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

I think you had a question, I know, about kind of organic or expansion maybe into new markets internationally. I think that's probably one we're not gonna talk too much about.

[Operator]

Okay. Next question. We have Shweta with Wolfe Research.

[Shweta Khajuria, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Thank you for taking my question. two quick ones for me, please. First, I'm sorry if I missed it, but did you quantify the impact of the fuel program on your P&L? If not, could we please get a sense of the impact? The second is how should we think about the partnership rides growth? The 27% data point is great. Any sense on how that cohort of 27% of the rides, what that growth is versus the non-partnership rides? How does that compare? Thank you.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Shweta, I'll take the fuel question, then turn it over to David. We talked in our prepared remarks and on this call, we're really proud just generally all the time about the way that we engage with our drivers, about the continued preference that they demonstrate for our platform. I think that's important because we're super proud to have been really first out there with a relief program. I think it says a lot about who we are as a company overall. What we did in this overall program is really take the approach of leaning in with our partners. We've got a great driver rewards program overall. It offers all kinds of benefits to partners.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

leaning in with our partners to provide relief here in terms of, you know, drivers can get almost a dollar in savings across all the programs, that's really co-funded overall, if you think about the way that those benefits accrue. While all of this is meaningful to drivers certainly and material to them, it's not material to our overall financial profile, nor do we expect it to be in the second quarter.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

On the partnership side, there's not too much more I can say, but maybe just give a little bit of color. You know, maybe two ways to think about it. One is, like, different partners do provide different types of benefits to us as a business. On average, partners tend to be quite strong at bringing higher, sort of higher bookings type rides on average. United you can, you know, absolutely probably imagine why that would be true. Same with Alaska, same with Hilton, same with Chase. Sometimes it's quite significant.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

You know, it's a sort of a new set of rider or a set of riders who are taking, you know, typically higher priced rides, which tend to have higher margins and people tend to be quite loyal to those programs and therefore they take, you know, rides, you know, quite regularly. You have maybe more of a sort of volume strategy with DoorDash. I mean, DoorDash is kind of the, you might sort of think of it as the volume anchor, you know. It's got such a large program, DashPass, but also, you know, as I mentioned, you know, people eat, you know, quite a lot. Therefore, that's an important piece of the puzzle.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

In and overall as a portfolio tends to be, you know, quite a healthy part of our, of our kind of ride, our rider portfolio. That just kind of gives you a sense of how we think about it. Different have different characteristics, but on average really quite nice typically on the booking side and frequency side.

[Shweta Khajuria, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Okay. Thank you both.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure.

[Operator]

The last question is gonna be with Rohit from Roth Capital. Did we lose you?

[Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital]

Hey, can you hear me now? It said unmute. I hope you can hear me.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

It's your go.

[Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital]

Okay. I had two questions, one on pricing and one on AVs. You talk about this Check Lyft messaging campaign. Are you seeing any kind of measurable changes in rider behavior since you launched it, perhaps improved conversion from price-sensitive shoppers? If you think and becomes a normalized kind of consumer behavior, is there a scenario that could lead to more structural pressure on industry pricing over time? Or perhaps there is more pricing power that both companies have. That's just first question. Second on AVs, it feels like the three cities closer to launch, Nashville, Hamburg, London. Can you just level set how are you operating in or offering your services, be it the orchestration layer, fleet operations, depot management?

[Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital]

Perhaps talk through your capabilities across those three places.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Sure, Rohit. I'll take this. These are big last questions, you know, let's do it.

[Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital]

Oh, sorry.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Let's do it.

[Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital]

Yeah.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Yeah, no problem at all. Okay, on pricing, let's talk about that for a second. Okay, you asked about sort of results and then maybe kind of the implications on the future. The results right now are great, promising, but it's still very early. You know, these are, it's quite an early campaign. You'll see us turn up the volume there, which is probably a good indication that we like what we see so far. You know, this is a very price competitive, already a very competitive marketplace. You know, I don't think either company truthfully has a lot of room on the price side because if we did, you know, we would've done it. You know, we do it every day.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

You know, another way to say it would be three million times a day, we try to offer the best price we possibly can. As Erin says, you know, reliable competitive pricing is our strategy. You know, that is maybe not, you know, something I worry so much about. What I do think is true is customers who check both apps tend to do better. You know, there's that study out there that says, you know, in New York they'd save $170. It's just true. You know, the more people who kind of check both, I think the healthier the marketplace gets. Keeps us both on our toes. That's the way we think about it.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

We, you know, obviously our position is kind of a nice one to be in because we offer a very competitive product. Fast ETAs, in many cases faster than the competition. Good pricing, in many cases, less expensive, although clearly not always, than the competition. If more people check us out, then we can, you know, start to impress them with the quality of our service and so forth and so on. Now I can talk all about driver cancellation, how we've done a great job there, and pickup times and so forth. It kind of tends to be very nice reinforcement once people get into our place. Yeah. I'm gonna turn it over to Erin, and then we'll come back on AVs.

[Erin Brewer, CFO at Lyft]

Yeah. Maybe before you dive into AVs, Rohit, I think something interesting to point out. David mentioned early days, you know, this campaign has been live in San Francisco and New York. These are two cities that also have a pretty heavy mix of premium modes. In your question was the implication of sort of price-sensitive riders, and hopefully what you gathered from David's answer, but I think it's really important in our observation in these early cities is that's not really the thing, right? The thing is just, hey, check. As opposed to doing something maybe out of habit, just check. It, you know, I just wanted to clarify that.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Absolutely right. Super appreciate it. By the way, everybody likes a deal. Everybody likes a deal. We see that up and down. On AVs. You mentioned a couple of areas, a couple of cities that we've talked specifically about. Let's give you a quick update on each. Maybe start with Nashville, then go to London, then go to Hamburg. In Nashville, it's actually quite exciting. You see Waymo's on the road right now. Later this summer, we start to take over operations of them.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

We open up our whole, kind of new center, this 80,000 sq ft center, and then you'll be able to actually order a Waymo on the Lyft app, in our hybrid marketplace there, which is really something we're very, very excited about. It's going great. How can I characterize it? I guess what I would say there is, we've been in a very nice position for the last 10 years. We've about 50,000 cars that we've had to manage through our Flexdrive subsidiary. Those 50,000 cars have driven, literally billions of miles. Billions of miles.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

That has required an enormous amount of expertise, or that has delivered to us an enormous amount of expertise on maintenance, you know, availability, and so forth. We think we're the, you know, industry leading on the operations side. When you look at the partner we have, in this case, Waymo, inarguably the world's leader in AV tech. You marry that with what we believe is the world's leader in fleet operations and efficient fleet operations, low-cost fleet operations, we really are very excited about what we see there. That's kind of where Nashville is. Over the summer you'll see that grow pretty quickly. In London, it's a different situation. In London, our partner is Baidu.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Baidu, arguably the second sort of most advanced technology out there, certainly in terms of driver out, miles driven, and so forth and so on. I was actually just in China a couple weeks ago meeting with them. Incredible company. Their RT6 cars have just rolled off literally the docks. The same ones I was riding in Beijing are now in London. They're beginning mapping streets. It'll take a while there. It takes a while when you add a new technology to city streets. There are regulators that you have to work with, and we're spending a lot of energy working with regulators on issues like data privacy, for example.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Very, very important, but I'm super proud of our team. They've made incredible progress there. Then there's just the physics of the thing. You know, just as a quick story, in London, a lot of small streets that are two-way, how do you navigate, you know, a two-way street with AVs where you can't, you know, signal each other, you go first, you go first? These things take time, but we've got an ODD that's beginning to get mapped out, we're sort of beginning there. At the same time, very much on track. Then Hamburg, that's a different thing.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Hamburg is really just we've established a partnership with the city level saying that we're gonna be the AV provider there. We haven't given too much more detail on it, I won't do so today, it just gives you a sense that, you know, things are gonna roll out both in the U.S. and Europe, you know, in a number of different ways. That's kind of where things stand. Okay.

[Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital]

Okay.

[David Risher, CEO at Lyft]

Listen, I think I'm getting the wrap up. Yeah, you're so welcome. Thank you, Rohit. Thank you all. Really appreciate your joining the call today, of course. Looking ahead, super excited about another strong year coming up, as we continue to track towards our 2027 targets. Thanks for coming along on the ride with us. You take care. We'll see you next time.

Participants

Executives

• David Risher, CEO
• Erin Brewer, CFO

Analysts

• Ben Black, Analyst at Deutsche Bank
• Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen
• Rohit Kulkarni, Analyst at Roth Capital
• Shweta Khajuria, Analyst at Wolfe Research
• Analyst at Barclays
• Analyst at Bernstein
• Analyst at JPMorgan
• Analyst at KeyBank
• Analyst at MoffettNathanson
• Analyst at Oppenheimer
• Analyst at Wells Fargo