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- [00:03]
A
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
- [00:08]
B
Okay. Shares of Lyft are down around 15% on track for the biggest drop since August of 2024. The stock's under pressure, but in the company's earnings. The company kind of set out on working on a global expansion and new product offerings. Lyft CEO David Richer is here with us in San Francisco. I want to go to the core business because, you know, I'm going to get to Robotaxi shortly. You know, like the things that are good for you are black chauff rides, airports. Those are higher value. And so like my interpretation of reading all the analyst response at least is that they looked at the kind of profit outlook and said that's a bit below what we expected. What were the factors behind that if those kind of high value segments are doing great?
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C
I mean, it's so it's a good question. Right. Look, we had a blowout quarter, so record bookings, accelerated, record profits, never been higher. Record cash flow, record customers.
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B
Okay.
- [00:59]
C
So all that is really good and what it shows is that customer obsession is what drives profitable growth. Now, there's no question it sounds like analysts are looking at things like margin, but as you just pointed out, a lot of our biggest growth is actually in the highest value modes, highest margin modes. So we've got a lot of conviction that we're in a good place and only getting better.
- [01:16]
B
You and I spent some time together at the end of last year and we went kind of a bit deeper on the Robotaxi plan. Yeah, it's through partnerships and it's leveraging what you believe is a strength in fleet management. That's right. Succinctly update us on everything that's due to happen then, please.
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C
Oh, my good. I mean, this is going to be a big year for self driving cars. Right. And let's start with sort of the big picture. When self driving cars come on to a network like ours, it tends to expand the market. And you would expect that because it's a cool new product, it's reliable, you know, you can kind of space out, you can text and not worry about a driver overhearing a phone call, something like this. So that's really good. Okay, so then what happens is you got to make sure that you're well positioned with all the best players in the market. If you're on, you know, in our, in our business, we are, we've got way more partnership, as you know. We've got a Baidu partnership that we've just announced is going to be live In London later this year, we just worked out an agreement with the city of Hamburg in Germany to be the first robotaxi provider there. So that's wonderful. So you've got the partnerships, you've got the cities lined up and now you've got to be able to manage this fleet. And as you just said, this is the sexy part, but it's so important. You've got to be able to make sure these cars are charged, clean and ready to go. We have a Flex Drive subsidiary that's been doing that for years. We think we're the best in class and our goal is to be maybe 5% cheaper than any other place with higher quality to put robotaxis on the network cheaper.
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A
That doesn't immediately make me think profit driving, David, in that way. And so, like, talk about your targets, you've got this 1 billion billion by 2027. And Bloomberg Intelligence warning, that looks pretty ambitious at this stage.
- [02:46]
C
Well, so when I say cheaper, I mean the lowest cost way. Right. And that's the thing is I want our cost position to be really good to your point, like our goals, which we set out a couple of years ago, our top line growth of 2015% mid teens, year on year, we're very much on track for that. And bottom line growth, getting to $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA, which would be 4% margin, very much on track for that. But what it means is you've got to be really smart about managing your costs. You' really good about kind of managing equality. And we're doing really well on both. We've just made progress. As I say, we've had our best, profitable, highest profitable quarter just this past Q4.
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A
I think, therefore go back to the AV world because there is this ongoing anxiety that the competition is just going to get so fierce. Are you set up to win? What are you saying to convince the investor base they shouldn't be selling off your shares like this?
- [03:35]
C
Yeah, I think that the way to think about AVs is they're going to be good for the whole industry, the rideshare industry, because as I say, it's a good new product at a lower cost. And I think why we are particularly well positioned is we have demand that runs to the 2, 3, 4 million people a day level. So we have lots of demand for this. And you know what they want? They want a fast, reliable pickup is going to get them where they want to go. Sometimes they want to be driven by a human, sometimes by a robot. Just kind of depends. And so this idea of A hybrid network. I think it's a real strength, particularly when you. When you sort of marry it with fleet.
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B
Is there a case study for you to reflect on in real terms then, like Atlanta may mobility. What are you learning there? And by the way, what's the status of it in terms of like, fully driverless, etc.
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C
Yeah, for sure. So we're in Atlanta. We have. We still have safety drivers in the car just to make sure everything is going well. And, you know, because we want this to be an incredibly high quality, incredibly safe experience. What we're learning is people love it. I mean, this is the interesting thing. People, before they. When they hear about EVs, are often a little skeptical. They sound like, I'm not sure I'm going to be excited about taking a car that's driven by a robot. You know, five minutes later, they've kind of fallen in love.
- [04:36]
B
And that's high. Like, what's the metric?
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C
Yeah, super high. Super high, basically. I mean, as much supply as we can get, we can put on the road because there's plenty of demand for these things. I think if you want to look at case study for broadly speaking, maybe look at the transition from DVDs to streaming, right. It's a similar sort of technology shift. And look how big streaming is today compared to DVDs the past. It's going to be that kind of wave.
- [04:58]
A
Steven, you know what else I love a lot of New Yorkers love is the bikes. And, boy, has this snow made things really difficult. Hate to get personal, but, I mean, look at these pictures. I am really struggling to get my bike out. I'm really struggling to get it back in. How much of a hit is this to having to refund customers? How much are you thinking about what the city and you can work together with to make this a really costly business for you in these sorts of temperatures?
- [05:23]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, this has been a big, big learning for us. Obviously, there's a huge snowstorm. I'm told that we're about 75% dugout right now, which is amazing. But that takes a lot of work, a lot of just physical labor to make sure the bike stations are available. I think people have taken something like half a million rides in the last couple of days, which is pretty amazing considering the cold and snow. Anyway, working super closely with the city on it, really making sure that the availability of these bikes, which, as you say, we run behind the scenes as high as we can get it.
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B
I asked Bloomberg Tech producer Justin Lao to pop his head out the window and check because like here in the bay, obviously we don't get confronted by snow. But you know, I went back and read my history about the kind of micro mobility part of the business. It is a smaller part, revenues basis, but clearly it's still important to you.
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C
It is.
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B
How important?
- [06:07]
C
Yeah, I mean, mean, look, as you say, financially it's relatively small, but this is the future. Look, when you talk about AVs, that's part of the future. When you talk about micro mobility, once people get on an E bike it's, I say this sometimes it's kind of like meeting a person who's just started pickleball, like they have to tell you about it, how amazing this thing is. Same with E bikes, you know, so it's like, so this is. Sometimes you can see the future and if you look out three, five, ten years, you're going to see more people on E bikes, you're going to see more people in self driving cars and you know, and of course you're also going to see people in human driven cars and that's what we're building.