Lyft Stock Rises 5% in Pre-Market as Firm Releases Q3 Earnings

American ride-sharing service provider Lyft Inc (NASDAQ: LYFT) has released its third-quarter Q3 earnings report. The released earnings report from Lyft which saw improved performance from the previous quarter also featured revenues that beat analysts’ estimates, according to CNBC.

Per the report, the company recorded a revenue of $499.7 million as against the analyst’s expectations of $499.7 million. The revenue reported for the third quarter though comes at a 48% decline from the $955.6 million recorded in the year-ago period, it impressed investors as it is a 47% increment from the $339.3 million earned in the second quarter of 2020.

The performance of Lyft in the Q3 follows this general pattern highlighted above, poor when compared on a year-over-year basis and better when compared with the previous quarter this year. While the Net loss for Q3 2020 was $459.5 million as against the net loss of $463.5 million in the same period of 2019, the Adjusted net loss for Q3 2020 was $280.4 million versus an adjusted net loss of $121.6 million in the third quarter of 2019.

The company’s active riders grew from 8.7 million riders in Q2 to 12.5 million in the quarter under review while the revenue per active rider for the third quarter came in at $39.94. The performance came following the reopened economy in the third quarter, and subsequent growth guidance has been made amid the rising coronavirus cases in the United States.

“Lyft’s third-quarter results reflect our focused execution and business resilience,” said Logan Green, co-founder and chief executive officer of Lyft. “We are encouraged by the ongoing recovery in ridesharing and the performance improvements we saw across bikes, scooters and fleet. We remain confident that demand will continue to return as we progress through the recovery,” added he.

The revenue performance of the company has spiked a recovery in its shares which closed down by 4.35% on Tuesday. At the pre-market, Lyft shares surged by up to 7% and currently trading with a 5.41% rise at $38 at the time of writing.

Lyft Earnings and Coronavirus Impact

The coronavirus pandemic which significantly impacted the ride-sharing business ecosystem in the US that is dominated by Lyft and Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE: UBER) seems to have a lower impact on the latter than the former. This is because Uber, in addition to the ride-sharing services also runs a food and grocery delivery business unit that remained relevant during the pandemic.

Lyft is now considering diversifying its portfolio to provide competition to Uber in the food and retail delivery subsectors. Lyft ended its third quarter with $2.5 billion of unrestricted cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments, a liquidity position that can aid its new business venture plans.

With the delivery outfit, Lyft will have more earnings backup as it looks to return to profitability by Q4 2021.