Both Uber and Lyft continue to struggle to become profitable enterprises, according to second-quarter earnings reports filed by the two companies last week.
Lyft’s losses more than tripled in the quarter to $644.2 million, despite increases in revenue and ridership. Revenues shot up 72% to $867.2 million, while active riders increased 41% to 21.8 million.
Still, Lyft’s Chief Executive Logan Green remained optimistic. “This was a milestone quarter on our path to profitability,” he said during the earnings call. “We’re rapidly building a world where you can trade in your car keys and ride with Lyft,” he said.
To that end, Lyft continues to invest in autonomous vehicles in Las Vegas and Phoenix. “We’re early in the testing process,” Green said. “We want to make sure everybody understands this is — autonomous vehicle development is a very long game.” Lyft has done 50,000 rides on Aptiv’s self-driving vehicle platform in Vegas, Green pointed out.
Meanwhile, Uber posted record-breaking losses — $5.5 billion — in its second quarter as a publicly traded company. However, $298 million of the loss was related to a driver appreciation award, and $3.9 billion a stock-based compensation award, both associated with the company’s initial public offering. Notwithstanding, Uber still would have lost $1.3 billion for the period.
Revenues, on the other hand, were on the rise, up 12% to $3.2 billion, driven largely by an increase in monthly active platform users, Uber’s Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said. In June alone, Uber had 100 million active users.
Yet despite profitability concerns, Khosrowshahi considers car ownership Uber’s main competitor. “When we look at the ridesharing category, our top competitor in this category is car ownership and other ways of getting around,” he said. “And when I look at how we are faring against car ownership, we’re faring very well.”
“We expect that both the mix shift as well as the price adjustments will increase revenue per Active Rider [looking forward],” Khosrowshahi said. [Further], we expect that revenue per Active Rider could accelerate in 3 up to 1% versus 2Q,” he added.
