Demand for taxis

Lyft has increased revenues compared with the previous quarter and expects a further recovery in demand for its taxi service. Lyft provided an outlook for the coming quarter and reiterated its promise to become profitable in the third quarter.

Shares in Lyft (LYFT) rose 6.8% in after-hours trading on Tuesday, reacting to the company's positive financial report and outlook.

Thanks to the mass vaccination of more than half of the US population against COVID-19, the lifting of many quarantine restrictions and the resumption of air travel, demand for taxi rides was growing in the first quarter of 2021.

Lyft's biggest rival Uber (UBER) said last month that March 2021 was its best month ever. Uber will report its first-quarter financial results today after the close of trading.

For the first quarter, Lyft reported a smaller loss per share than analysts had expected: -$0.35 versus -$0.53. That's up from a loss of -$0.32 in the first quarter of 2020, but well below the previous three quarters.

The company was able to reduce losses by cutting costs, in addition, Lyft management noted a gradual recovery in travel demand, stating in mid-March that it expects positive weekly ridership growth each subsequent week through the end of the year, unless the pandemic situation deteriorates significantly. Lyft's revenues were down 36% from last year but up 7% from the fourth quarter: to $609 million against an analyst estimate of $558.7 million.

The average number of active Lyft users in the first quarter increased by more than 7% compared to the last three months of 2020.

The number of active Lyft users at the end of March was 13.49 million versus the 12.8 million expected by analysts.

Revenue per active user rose to $45.13 versus $44.50 as forecast.

Management confirmed that it expects earnings in the third quarter, at which time the $550 million deal to sell Lyft Autonomous's unmanned car division to Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet should be closed.

Lyft expects revenues in the second quarter to be between $680 million and $700 million.