Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi sits down with Lyft (LYFT) CEO David Risher at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia and Tech Conference to discuss the company’s performance and how autonomous vehicles will affect its growth story.
Risher argues that "customer obsession drives profitable growth," and highlights initiatives from lowering prices to rolling out its Women+ Connect as ways Lyft has grown over the last year. He attributes this mindset to the company posting its first profitable quarter and explains that the company has much more opportunity ahead. In the next year, Risher wants to see Lyft "compete like heck on service" for both riders and drivers. He points to Lyft’s Price Lock feature as one example already in place, which allows riders to lock in a price for their commute as a way to fight back against surge pricing.
While consumers have been struggling with inflation, Risher believes "the gig economy is so here to stay." Many choose to make Lyft their side hustle to bring in extra income outside of their typical day job. He adds that Lyft’s driver supply is "super healthy," attributing it more to the success of the platform than larger economic issues. He points to Lyft’s airport rides recovering to 2019 levels as an indicator of an overall resilient consumer.
Despite improving profits and cutting costs, shares of Lyft are still down year-to-date. Risher believes the stock is under pressure for two reasons: macro concerns about the consumer and interest in autonomous vehicles. He reiterates that Lyft is not being impacted by weakened consumer spending, and calls the concerns "a little bit overblown." As for autonomous vehicles, he believes the technology will be "great" for the company: "I think it’s going to bring new supply, and frankly, bring an experience onto the platform that a lot of people will find pretty cool."
He continues, "We have 1.4 million people who drive on the platform every year. Every single one of those we have to onboard. We have to pay. We have to offboard and they don’t want to anymore and all that. So we know how to do that at scale. So if people want to put their AVs (autonomous vehicles) on our platform, that’s great. That’s what we’re going to make easy."
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