Lyft soars 20% on beat-and-raise Q3 performance

Investing.com -- Lyft lifted its full-year guidance Wednesday after reporting third-quarter revenue that beat analyst estimates. 

LYFT Inc (NASDAQ:LYFT ) soared more than 20% in premarket trading Thursday. 

For the three months ended Sept. 30, Lyft reported a loss of $0.03, in-line with analysts estimates, but revenue of $1.52 billion topped estimates of $1.44B.

The company said that ride-sharing activity reached all time high during the quarter.

Active riders on its platform jumped 9% to 24.4M in Q3 compared to the same period last year, while rides increased 16% year-over-year to $217M.

For Q4, the company sees adjusted EBITDA of $100M to $105M and an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 2.3% to 2.4%

For 2024, the company said it now expected adjusted EBITDA margin of about 2.3%, up from the prior outlook of 2.1%, with gross bookings expected to grow about 17% year-over-year.

Bank of America reiterated a Buy rating on LYFT shares following the report's release.

The bank's analysts believe that the print helps alleviate some of the Wall Street's "concerns on strong volume growth possibly driven by pricing/discounting."

"With Uber (NYSE:UBER ) growing its US bookings 17% in 3Q, Lyft is seemingly limiting incremental share losses, focusing on core customers and commuters that are still growing order frequency," analysts added, raising their price target on the stock from $16 to $19. 

Meanwhile, Wolfe Research analysts said they feel "incrementally encouraged" following Lyft's beat and raise results.

Yasin Ebrahim contributed to this report. 

Source: Investing.com