Lyft

Lyft is a private company based in San Francisco that allows users to find drivers collaborating with the service using an Internet site or mobile application and are ready to give them a ride for a reasonable fee. Lyft's motto is "your friend with a car."

Performance indicators

2018: Revenue growth 103% to $2.16 billion

In 2018, Lyft's revenue amounted to $2.16 billion, an increase of 103% compared to the previous year. Volume of orders (the amount that users transferred for trips; excluding payment of commission to drivers) in 2018 reached $8.05 billion, which is 76% higher than a year ago. The company's annual losses were equal to $911.3 million.

History

2022: Restructuring with reduction of a quarter of employees

The American company Lyft, a taxi aggregator, announced a restructuring, during which the number of personnel will decrease by about a quarter. The corresponding notice was published on April 27, 2023 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Taxi aggregator Lyft has cut a quarter of its employees due to the US crisis
Photo: DerAktionar.de

The cuts will affect 1,072 employees, 26% of the total workforce, it said. In addition, Lyft eliminated approximately 250 open vacancies and said that the pace of admission of new workers will slow down. This is due to the difficult macroeconomic situation and the crisis: in the current conditions, the company is forced to save money to maintain business processes.

In accordance with the reorganization plan in the second quarter of 2023, Lyft will incur expenses in the amount of $41 million to $47 million related to severance pay and other payments to dismissed employees. In addition, the company expects to incur additional compensation costs based on the value of the shares, but Lyft cannot estimate the amount of these losses.

The restructuring is the initiative of new Lyft CEO David Risher, who took over in April 2023. Other measures will be taken to strengthen the market position and improve financial performance. In particular, the number of management levels will be reduced from eight to five, which will "bring executives closer to their teams." The main business area will be divided into three parts with clear responsibility - the client segment, marketplace and platforms. The money saved as a result of job cuts and organizational changes will be used, among other things, to improve the level of customer service and improve the working conditions of drivers.^[1]

2021

Toyota bought the division of unmanned vehicles Lyft for $550 million

At the end of April 2021, Uber's main competitor in the United States, Lyft, sold its self-driving car division to Toyota for $550 million. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.

As a buyer of assets, the company Woven Planet Holdings, which is part of the Japanese auto giant, acted. Under the terms of the agreement, $200 million was provided to Lyft immediately, and the remaining $350 million will be paid over five years. Toyota also intends to use fleet data and Lyft's platform for any commercial services it eventually launches under its subsidiary, Woven Planet.

Toyota acquired the division of unmanned vehicles Lyft for $550 million

The deal will complete Lyft's four-year journey to develop and implement its own self-driving cars. The company follows rival Uber in shedding its expensive autonomous vehicle division in an effort to stop losing so much money. Last year, Uber sold its AV project to Aurora, a startup founded by a former Google autonomous driving project manager.

Lyft launched its Level 5 self-driving car division in 2017, saying most rides will be driver-free by 2021. The company hired hundreds of engineers to work at a 50,000-square-foot facility in Palo Alto,. California A year later, Lyft acquired Britishstartup at for ON augmented reality Blue Vision Labs for $72 million in hopes of accelerating the development of self-driving cars.

However, Lyft's prediction never came true, and despite some technical advances, autonomous vehicles are still very far from mass adoption. Toyota, meanwhile, has invested $400 million in Pony.ai, a self-driving car startup, and has been testing for several years at a closed plant in Ottawa Lake, Michigan.^[2]

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2019: Going public: Capitalization - $22.2 billion

On March 29, 2019, Lyft entered the Nasdaq exchange, on which the shares are listed under the ticker symbol LYFT. The company set the placement price at $72. Trading in securities began at the level of $87.14, but according to the results of the exchange session, they fell to $78.29. True, this is 8.7% higher than the placement price.

High demand from market participants allowed Lyft to increase the range of the initial offering price to $70-72 from the initial $62-68 and sell them at the upper border. Taking into account the shares and options issued to employees, Lyft's market capitalization on the first day in the status of a public company amounted to $22.2 billion. During the auction, the cost reached $26.5 billion.

At the end of March 2019, Lyft went public

Lyft's listing was the largest in the U.S. since Alibaba went public in 2014. Then the Chinese Internet giant placed shares on the stock exchange in New York and was valued at $169 billion.

As part of the IPO, the taxi ordering service, which by the end of March 2019 operates in more than 300 cities in the United States and Canada, sold 32.5 million shares (more than originally reported) and raised about $2.34 billion . 19 million shares were sold in the first 15 minutes.

According to Reuters, Lyft conducted a successful IPO, despite large losses, criticism of the structure of dual-class shares and some concerns about the company's strategy in the field of self-driving cars and new laws aimed at increasing driver wages.

Lyft is Uber's main competitor in the US market. Uber also plans to go public and is set to do so in spring 2019 - presumably in April.^[3]

Notes