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Lyft’s 2016 Financials Show Business Gains

Jan 12, 2017 1:26 PM PST ·

Lyft, the ride-hailing app that’s a distant No. 2 to Uber in the U.S., lost about $600 million last year after generating $700 million in revenue, according to data reviewed by The Information and people with knowledge of the company’s finances.

Despite the size of the loss, the 2016 results were a big improvement on the previous year when Lyft lost twice as much as the revenue it brought in, the data show. The latter half of 2016, in particular, was much stronger than the second quarter of the year, which was Lyft’s worst-ever quarter in terms of red ink, according to the data.

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Lyft, which has raised $2 billion and a year ago had a $5.5 billion post-money valuation on paper, still has more than $1 billion in cash on hand. It’s planning to be profitable regardless of what self-driving cars might do for the business someday by taking out the cost of the human driver. (Autonomous vehicles potentially would introduce new costs such as needing to purchase the vehicles, actively monitor them and maintain them.) A Lyft executive told The Information last fall that a majority of rides in five years on Lyft will be from autonomous vehicles. That time frame is far from assured.