Lyft posts best earnings ever: record gross bookings, EBITDA, and active riders — and CEO Risher details the hybrid robotaxi strategy

Welcome to the show. How are you doing? Congratulations. Massive earnings call. Looking good. You guys look more like you're kind of calling in from like a radio show or something like that than us. I love this setup. This is [laughter] great. That's how I feel. I feel like we're like the we're like the morning DJ crew.

It's like morning hot hits all day long. I love There you go. There you go. Take us through what happened today. What's the news? Okay, so just off our earnings call. So for those of you who don't know, a public company, I'm David, by the way.

is and CEO CFO and what you know we do uh you know every quarter is we spend about an hour or so talking to analysts about what just happened the prior 3 months. So here's what just happened.

Uh best earnings ever, highest sales ever, you know, you know, uh high more active riders uh than ever, more driver hours than ever. And here's a crazy fun fact. I love the air horn. So, but here's a crazy fun fact.

So, when Aaron and I started about two and a half years ago, we were we were uh sort of losing, you know, maybe $300 million in cash every year. Now, uh we just had our first billion dollar over the trailing 12 months um cash flow uh generation. So, just a huge huge hit the gong for that. There we go. All right.

That is amazing. We don't we don't get to hit the gong for free cash flow as much as we'd like. So, so what's the plan with the cash flow? Are are you uh [laughter] We're zooming all over the place. Uh is uh I mean we've talked to some folks who are in similar situations.

They flip their business around, they start generating cash, then it's time to buy back stock. It's time to reinvest in the future. It's time to uh pay dividends. What have you done in the past? And how are you thinking? How do you even make that type of decision? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Happy to, you know, uh first of all, as David mentioned, like what a privilege to be here now. two and a half years later be in this position where we're generating cash. We also guided out a few years in advance and said we're going to generate even more cash than we thought over the next couple of years.

So, you know, C CFO's dream here. Uh over 2025, you know, if you think about what we've done, we announced our first share buyback program in the company's history. Uh we said we would is $750 million in size. We said we would uh use about 500 million of that by May of 2026.

In fact, we're going to uh you know, things are going great. We're going to actually use that 500 million by the end of 2025. So, uh and then we've acquired two companies. We bought uh Free Now in Europe, leading taxi provider in Europe. And then we most recently announced the acquisition of TBR global chauffeurring.

We announced some investments we have coming up in Whimo.

So if you think about that overall pretty balanced but very very focused on you know we are a growth business we are in growth markets and so having the opportunity to invest against that to do it in a way that's very conscious of driving value for our shareholders not in terms of the growth not only in terms of growth of the business but in deploying some of that back and share buyback.

So we like the balance. Yeah. The question on everyone's head on the top of everyone's head I'm sure is uh autonomous vehicles. You're probably getting AV questions constantly. Uh maybe set the table for us. Walk through Yeah.

What just walk through the the highlevel thesis and then maybe we can uh dig into uh some of the particulars of the strategy. Yeah. 100%. It it is the number one question everyone's asking and you don't look what a privilege right because how often do you get to be in an industry that is clearly going to be transformed?

Okay. So what's going to happen? We think the market size is going to grow dramatically. Like we think AVs for the sector. I'm not just talking about for LIT, but for the sector because it's a good product. If you've been in San Francisco or some of the other places where you can see AVs, it's safe.

You can kind of zone out in the back seat. You can, you know, whatever you want to do. So, uh, a lot of So, anyway, so it's a cool product. And so, what that tends to do is it tends to expand the market. Okay. So, what are we doing? You know, we're not in the business of making cars or even making AB tech.

So, we got to partner. Who have we partnered with? Well, we've partnered with two of the biggest in the world. Whimo in the United States, who's clearly the market leader in the US, and BU in China, who's clearly the market leader there. That'll help us get cars and tech up into Europe.

And what you'll see is we'll integrate these onto our platform and create what we think of as a hybrid network. Lot of drivers on our platform, 1. 5 million drivers, 1. 6 million drivers on the platform. They're going to continue to drive because there aren't enough AVs in the world just to satisfy the demand with AVs.

But then, you know, in certain markets like Nashville and others, we'll have more and more AVs in the platform and create something where holes greater than the sum of the parts. When are we bringing track cars to the platform?

If you want to track a car, you want a Ferrari challenge or, you know, some sort of BMW that's been modified for the track and you want to rent that on. [laughter] I love the way John recently John We did a track day on Sunday and now it's the only thing.

It's the only thing I think about but but but I do think that the the actual like the the the car ownership pattern might actually change dramatically in the future. And uh this is my like like thesis is it's half a joke is uh I own a track car.

I maybe take an autonomous vehicle uh on a commute or purely functional but then you drive for enjoyment. human drivers in the car for specific rides where uh where there's either higher demand or specific weather conditions or specific road conditions.

And so I feel like a lot of people want to hit, you know, oh, the new technology is going to come in, it's going to be 100% of the market on day one, and that's just never the way it plays out. Um, so how are you thinking about the way it plays out and how are you preparing for that transition?

I mean, you're putting your finger on something that I think as human beings we tend to do to a fault, which is we sort of think binary, right? It's this or it's that, you know, it's X or it's Y. And it rarely is is one or the other. It's it's almost always both.

And what turns and and this is the reason why, you know, frankly, being, you know, alive today is so interesting is you have these these new modalities. So, like, okay, look, over the last I'm an old guy. So, the last many years when I learned to drive, I drive on a stick. I still have a stick. It's great.

But I also have a Tesla which is not stick. In fact, it's the opposite of stick. Did you ever Did you ever drive stick in San Francisco when you were first learning?

Because John and I were in San Francisco last week and I was showing him like the different hills that I when I was when I was like whatever 16 and a half, 17 driving stick in uh driving a manual in San Francisco really is like a coming of age moment. It's kind of reversing into a parking space. Yeah. Yeah.

[laughter] I will tell you a story. I grew up on the east coast, but our daughters grew up in San Francisco. And I still smell in my head the grinding [laughter] clutch of our older daughter on devisero. You know what I mean? Like I was just burning my head. But that but that's what it's going to be like, right?

So it's going to be Yeah. I want to go, you know, uh I want to take a road trip. Of course I want to drive myself. That's super fun. I want to commute tomorrow. I'm just going to let something else do the do the thing and I'm going to zone out. And that's the that's the future we're building for.

I'll tell you one more funny thing which is another weird human thing. If you uh ask people, you know, do you want a driver on the car? A lot of people say nah, I'd rather just be alert. If you ask people, what's your favorite lift ride ever? They'll say, oh my god, I had this amazing conversation with this driver.

I learned all about his life or he asked me about my day or whatever. That's the future. The future is not going to be just mechanical and virtual and it's not just going to be physical. It's going to be this blend and that's where we're building to. Uh talk about uh flex drive.

talk about all the like how complicated the value chain is. Even if we see amazing performance in AVs and we get tons of autonomous vehicles on the road, it feels like there's there are tons of things that Tesla's not going to want to do. There's tons of things that Whimo's not going to want to do.

There are going to be other competitors and other differentiators. Walk through the whole supply chain, how it fits in, how you're how you're planning to fit in. So, this touches on something again. so important. And I'll use a funny analogy for a second.

Uh I don't know why, but for some reason like my Tik Tok stuff or my users like often they'll have like here's what Disney World looks like to you and then they'll like zoom they'll like they'll do drone shots and be like that haunted mansion looks amazing like there's a huge building behind it that looks nothing like a haunted man just a warehouse with with same thing with AVs like it looks like a sort of a seamless digital thing but behind it as you say humans driving remotely.

Well there is some of that sometimes. Okay, that's interesting. That's [laughter] maybe maybe one person per five cars, but you know, and we're getting there better, but the tele operation will be occasionally tele operation is a thing. There's definitely valuable. Yeah, it makes sense.

Well, but but look, there's also someone's got to clean the car, someone's got to charge the car, someone's got to maintain the car, someone's got to reboot the car, you know, so there's all that that's called fleet management. We do it through a subsidiary called Flex Drive. Lyft has about 15,000 cars today.

These are not EVs today. These are EVs and normal uh you know ICE cars that are being managed by Flex Drive and kept available for drivers to use when they don't want to use their primary car. So that's a a piece of of it's a skill we have. It's great.

And then you got to keep those cars if they're available, you got to keep them utilized. You got to keep them, you know, the demand coming in and matching that that supply 24/7.

Even if it's raining, even if uh, you know, concert just got out, you know, even during the Super Bowl, you know, in the last five minutes of the Super Bowl where demand goes through the roof.

So anyway, what you're referring to or what you're kind of alluding to is that ride share is is complex and it's very big scale and you add AVs and it's only going to be more complex, but this is what we do. This is sort of our jam and um and we're super excited about this this uh the future for Yeah. Yeah.

No, I I it seems like uh you're set up very well with the cash flow to actually play in other industries. It's going to be a very exciting time. Uh Jordan, do you have anything else? Yeah, just uh ho how how have you guys like like what's been the focus internally with the team?

It feels like the best way to build confidence as a team is to just like steadily execute against your guys' plan and roadmap and you certainly have done that over the last couple years.

I'm I'm I imagine when both of you guys took this job, there were some people that were saying like why would you sign yourself up for this?

you know, it's harder to it's much harder to look like an incredible CEO or a CFO with a company that that needs some kind of new momentum and uh and uh you know, it's easier to look look like a genius if you're joining a business that's growing at you know, let's say uh 300% a year or something, you know, crazy like we're seeing in some of these AI companies.

But um but yeah, what what what is what has been the kind of unlock from a from a team or culture standpoint that has allowed you guys to deliver like this? I'll I'll jump in here from my perspective, you know, thinking about joining Lyft, you know, number one, just incredible brand, right?

This this company just has an incredible durable brand and it operates in a market where scale matters, right? And so you continue to grow scale, you can drive very attractive economics. And then certainly as I joined the company, uh you know, this company has an incredible culture, right?

We have a a tremendous teams here, incredibly smart, really really focused on our customers and inclined to always do the right thing, right? To think big, to do the next right thing.

So you know honestly the first 6 to9 months I think for both of us was just you know if you think about it the company was recovering from the pandemic founders stepped aside it was it was a big time of transition.

So focusing on execution focusing on just serving the customer delivering a great service and then taking it really step by step because that earns you the right right you build that discipline that success that earns you the right to do the next thing.

Now you start doubling down on product innovation for drivers, for riders. We start launching a slew of new products. That's super exciting for team members, for our riders, for the for the community out there. Then we start, you know, generating a lot of cash. Great. How do we build from there?

So, you know, I often reflect on this a little bit with David. It's, you know, there was sort of an inflection point of the company, I think, when we both came in and and I'll, you know, I speak for both of us. I think we both feel it now. It's like this next big leaping off point and um yeah, it's exciting.

It's a fun place to work. I'll I'll just say a tiny tiny bit more. I mean, when you come in, look, you got to cast a big vision so the people get kind of excited about it. And we had a big vision around customer obsession and around serving and connecting. You got to make sure you got the right people.

And I got super super lucky. Uh Aaron was one of the first hires I made, one of the best hires of my life, right? So, you got to have that right team around the table. And our management team is incredible. And then as Erin says, you just got to execute, execute, execute. And that success begets success begets success.

It unlocks opportunity. Now we can think even bigger. So we're just kind of getting started two and a half years in. I love it. I love success. I love seeing you guys win. Congratulations. Uh uh David, we really enjoyed our our last conversation. Aaron, it's great to meet you and uh looking forward to next quarter.

We'll talk to you soon. Well, I know that David was, you know, mentioning he wants to get the earnings call on your show. You know, this is this is, you know, the the closest we could come. Thank you for having us. Super fun, guys. Congratulations on awesome quarter. Have a great day.

Hey, congrats to you, too, by the way. Nice article on the New York Times. Did you guys write that? Did you write that? We did not. All Mike Isaac. Yeah, he fun with us. It was It was a lot of fun. Um, we survived. We did. Survived. Have a great to see you guys. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Thank you.

All right. Take care. on that. Um, let's check in with the timeline. Stefan was saying, uh, please ask them about the biggest fish they've caught. That should be that should be an ongoing question. The biggest fish. What's the biggest fish you've caught? What is the biggest fish you've caught, Jordy?

Uh, this is Have you ever caught a big fish? I've I've only gone fishing on uh the ocean. Yes. And did you know that's where they have the big fish? They do have the big fish in the ocean.

So this is but I went out on um I like doing I tend to like doing weekend activities that sounds strange but are like constrained to like a few hours okay and going out like hunt you know go we were going trying to go for blue fin tuna this was sometime last year I feel like and we spent like 12 hours out there did not catch wait before you Tyler how do you you do you have a bet going do you think Jord's biggest fish is over under 30 pounds what do you think uh I'm going under you're going Under 30 lbs.

Okay, Jordy, give us the final answer. How big was the blue fin tuna that you didn't catch? [laughter] We did not catch a blue fin tuna. So, have you ever caught a fish? You must have like gone in a pond one day and gotten a minnow, right? I don't think I don't think I've ever caught You've never caught anything?

I don't think I've ever caught a fish. You've never caught a fish entire life? But my my dad wasn't big into fishing. Wow. We went We would go camping shell. We need a trading card up. never caught a fish. I mean, we should we should we have to we have to change this. This is important. Yeah.

I It's It's funny growing up around the ocean, surfing my whole life, never never thought to just throw in the old line, the hook. It's so easy. You live by the ocean. You live walking just into the ocean. This is a challenge for you today, maybe this weekend. Walk to the ocean. Catch a fish. Catch a fish. Catch a fish.

You love Nou. You go to Nou all the time. You never thought, "What if I did it myself? What if I DIY Nou? Safe at Shank catches my That's true. That's true. Yeah. John, what's the biggest fish you've caught? 150 lbs, baby. Halibit. I was 10 years old. It was fantastic. The crowd goes wild.

It It weighed more than me at the time, which was electric because truly like conquering a beast that was bigger than me, which is like so satisfying. Uh I So I need to look into this, Tyler. Maybe this a good question for you. Hit the deep research, buddy.

Get ready to deep [laughter] get ready to do some deep research. But uh uh at my uh at my local beach, a place that I normally surf in Malibu, there are tons of leopard sharks and they hang out where the water's like 3 to 4 feet deep.

So after you catch a wave, if there's good visibility, you almost like every other wave I'm seeing a leopard shark. And usually I just kind of just jump back on my board and paddle out cuz they're like I don't know, they're like three or four feet. They're not they're not massive or anything. Yeah. Yeah.

But since you've challenged me to catch a fish, maybe the next time I jump down and try Shark is technically a fish. Yeah. Yeah, that would count. Yeah, they are. They're Yeah. So, I should just dive down and catch it with your bare hands. With my bare hands. I like this.

Um maybe we could Maybe we could uh If that doesn't work, I'd recommend trying to shoot fish in a barrel. I've heard that that's pretty easy. We'll get you a barrel. We'll get you a barrel fish and you and you can uh And you can Oh, I did. You can pull an AR-15 and just start shooting the fish in the barrel.

You know, shooting a fish in a barrel, it must be It's actually pretty hard to do, I imagine. Depends on the barrel. If you use a big gun, you're going to break the barrel and then water's going to go everywhere. My beautiful puffer fish. You caught that. My pride and joy. That doesn't really count.

I want to see you counting uh catching a an Atlantic blue fin tuna. They can exceed 1,500 lb with some estimates reaching up to 2,000 lb. Wow. That's what we need to do. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to the show, for watching the show. Leave us five stars in Apple Podcast and Spotify.

Subscribe to our newsletter at tbpn. com. To be honest, kind of want to keep going. [laughter] You want to go to the fifth hour? I kind of want to break the I kind of want to break the fifth hour. We have guests here. We have We do have guests here. We have to hang out with our guests.

Uh, thank you so much for watching. We will I can't wait to be back tomorrow. John's cutting me off. John's cutting me off. We did get into a good riff right at the end. It was It was fantastic. Amid amid 10 guests today. We uh new new question. Tomorrow we'll we'll ask every guest.

We'll ask Dave from Roblox will be joining tomorrow. We got Vlad from Robin Hood. What's the biggest fish? What's the biggest fish you've ever caught? This is important. We're doing a super chat. How big is the fish you've you've ever caught? The biggest fish. And then uh maybe we'll create a boom in fishing.

Maybe people would go fishing. Um, that's right. Fishing's underrated. Thank you so much for watching. We will see you tomorrow. Love you. Goodbye.