Ride-hailing platform Lyft published its first quarterly report on Tuesday after going public earlier this year, showing a huge loss for the quarter but with rising revenues. Notwithstanding the lack of reliable data typical of a company fresh on the public market, Lyft’s adjusted loss per share came at $9.02, and revenue at $776 million versus an expected $739.4 million.
However, the steep loss was comparably lower than last year’s non-GAAP loss of $11.40 per share and analysts have reasons to believe that this trend will continue for the rest of 2019. For its second quarter, Lyft expects to report revenue between $800 million and $810 million with guided total revenue between $3.275 billion and $3.3 billion for the full fiscal year.
Despite these results, Lyft’s user base has continued to grow over the first quarter of its fiscal year. The company said it had 20.5 million active riders in the quarter compared to 14 million in the first quarter of 2018. It also saw increased revenue per active rider at $37.86 compared to $28.27 for during the same quarter last year.
On positive news, Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo confirmed its partnership with Lyft and soon it would deploy 10 of its vehicles on Lyft. This step could be crucial for Lyft as automakers are increasingly shifting towards self-driving vehicles.
Lyft’s trading has been down more than 20% over the last month and nearly $13 off its IPO price of $72 per share, and its market cap has sunk to $17 billion. Lyft’s performance is being closely watched as it rival Uber is soon to go public later this week.