Lyft Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

On Thursday, Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT ) discussed second-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below. This transcript is brought to you APIs. For real-time access to our entire catalog, please visit for a consultation.

The full earnings call is available at Summary Lyft achieved record-breaking performance in Q2 2026 with over 30 million active riders and 262 million rides, aiming for over 1 billion rides in 2026. 5 billion, while adjusted EBITDA increased by 37%, showcasing strong cost leverage and operational excellence. Strategic initiatives include the growth of premium modes, successful partnerships (30% of rides linked to partners like DoorDash and United Airlines), and progress in autonomous vehicle (AV) operations. Lyft is focusing on global app integration with beta testing in European cities and plans for a unified app by 2027.

Positive outlook with expectations of continued rides growth, margin expansion, and deepening existing partnerships for further opportunities. Full Transcript OPERATOR Welcome to Lyft's second quarter 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. On the call today we have our CEO, David Risher, and our CFO, Erin Brewer.

Our prepared remarks are available on the IR website, and we'll use this time to answer your questions. We'll make forward-looking statements on today's call, including statements relating to our business strategy and performance, partnerships, future financial and other operating results, trends in our marketplace, and guidance. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied during this call. These factors and risks are described in our earnings materials and in our recent SEC filings.

All of the forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on our beliefs as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Additionally, today we're going to discuss customers for rideshare. There are generally two customers in every car: the driver is Lyft's customer and the rider is a driver's customer. We care about both.

Our discussion today will include non-GAAP financial measures, which are not a substitute for GAAP results. Reconciliations of our historical GAAP to non-GAAP results can be found in our earnings materials, which are available on our IR website. And with that, I'll pass the call to David. David Risher, Chief Executive Officer Thank you, Erin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Q2 2026 was a quarter of record-breaking performance for Lyft, demonstrating the durable strength of our marketplace. We achieved an all-time high of over 30 million active riders, proving that rideshare is embedded in people's everyday lives. Our results are guided by a simple, powerful strategy built on our relentless focus on customer obsession, operational excellence, and being a world-class partner.

This leads to more riders, more rides, and more ways to ride. With 262 million rides in the second quarter alone, we are well on our way to hitting over 1 billion rides in 2026. Our Up strategy continues to gain momentum, with premium modes growing double digits year on year for the 12th consecutive quarter, supported by record performance in our TBR chauffeuring business. We're also seeing unprecedented success in our ecosystem of partnerships, with approximately 30% of North American rideshare rides linked to a partner—a new all-time high—highlighting the scalable impact of our collaborations with leaders like DoorDash and United Airlines.

And with our app part of our strategy, our global integration efforts are on track as we move toward one unified Lyft app worldwide, with beta testing now live in over a dozen European cities, while our AV roadmap advances with smooth fleet operations in Nashville and strong testing results in London, ensuring we are well positioned for a hybrid AV future. With that, let me turn it over to Erin to take you through a few of our financial highlights. Erin Brewer, CFO Thanks, David. 5 billion.

Adjusted EBITDA grew 37% year over year, reflecting continued cost leverage, driving margin expansion, and our fourth consecutive quarter of over $1 billion in free cash flow for the trailing 12 months. Our team continues to build a business that is both high growth and highly disciplined, and with that, let's take your questions. OPERATOR As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message on your screen from the host allowing you to talk, and then you will hear your name called.

Please accept, unmute your audio, and ask your question. At this time, we ask that you limit to one question. We will wait one moment to allow the queue to form. Our first question comes from Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Your line is open. Please unmute and ask your question. Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs Great. Thank you for taking the question.

Hopefully you can hear me okay. I wanted to ask about the rider growth metric you reported in the quarter. Can you unpack the elements of what's driving rider growth and maybe track it back to elements of structural product improvements you're making, including some of the go-to-market partnerships you've signed and how much of it might have been things that were newer into the business like the California insurance dynamics, World Cup demand, any promotional activity? Just wanted to go a little bit deeper in terms of some of the structural versus maybe some of the transient dynamics around rider growth.

Thanks so much. Erin Brewer, CFO Yeah, hi Eric, this is Erin. Why don't I start and then David can jump in. So as I think about our results across Q2, it's really—to your point—it's not one thing.

I think about the strength of our North America rideshare business; you know, our growth foundationally, our continued strong growth as we think about expanding in low-scale markets—Canada—so themes we've seen and talked about repeatedly. We also just had an outstanding quarter within our bikes business. We talked about in our prepared remarks across several of our operated markets just hitting weekly, daily, all-time highs. The popularity of e-bikes and the way that those are embedded into people's commutes in certain cities is really impressive.

And then even FREE NOW—while, granted, we didn't have FREE NOW in the same quarter last year—even if I look at that, organically rides are up there. So that's great progress in some of the early improvements we've made in delivering great rides across Europe. So it's really foundational strength across the business as we think about growing active riders to that record number that we achieved in the quarter. David, I don't know if you want to join in.

Obviously partnerships play a role here. We had some great results there. I'll turn it over to you. David Risher, Chief Executive Officer Yeah, I mean, this is—excuse me—it's such an interesting question, and you can, as Erin just did, answer it on so many dimensions and, frankly, see so much strength on so many dimensions.

So Erin mentioned geography. We're seeing growth in North America in some of our largest markets like New York and some of our low-scale markets. As Erin said, in Canada we're continuing to see extraordinary growth there, almost double now year on year. In Europe we're seeing organic growth, which is absolutely wonderful.

This is about almost exactly a year into FREE NOW, and already we're starting to see real results of some of the technology and some of the product innovation that we've added to that platform. And we're really still just getting started there. So that would be one dimension. Then you asked about the product improvement dimension, and there you can look at everything from early days of things like Lyft Teens, which is going super well; the Silver, which continues super well; and even some of the stuff that's kind of—you almost take for granted but really shouldn't—around marketplace health.

Let me give you an example. We now have improved again year on year our ETAs—our pickup times—and on average they're down, so faster, anywhere from half a percent or a percent to 2% to 3%. It depends on the geography and so forth. But that, at our scale, is really quite meaningful.

And I'll take just a moment to brag for the team for a second. If I look at our competitor, we actually pick you up the same or faster than they do 75% of the time right now, which is really quite extraordinary because obviously we have a smaller share. So some of the foundational work really continues to help save money. Check, Lyft.

Right. So that's another piece. That's now on the marketing side. So it's really quite across the board.

And maybe that's not satisfying, but I think in a certain sense that says, gosh, the work we're doing—the customer-obsessed work we're doing—really is working across just about every dimension, even if you take out things like seasonality and World Cup and other things, which are obviously nice, but that's sort of a bit of external stuff. OPERATOR Our next question comes from Brad Erickson with RBC. Please unmute and ask your question. Brad Erickson, Analyst at RBC Capital Markets Hi, guys.

Two questions. One, as you think about kind of where you are on margins on the path hopefully to 4% next year, where do you think you're kind of really outperforming right now as we look forward, and where do you think there's still kind of work to do? And then second, just on Nashville, the depot coming online sounds like in October. Can you just kind of give us an update on what the gating factors are there to rolling out as a potential distribution partner, and is that still kind of on time to happen before the end of the year?

David Risher, Chief Executive Officer Thanks, that sounds good. Brad, why don't I start with the second part of the question, then Erin can take the first. So Nashville, I'll answer your question directly and also maybe zoom it just a click. So Nashville, yeah, very much on track for a depot opening, as you said.

That's the purpose-built depot. For those of you who didn't see this, it's about an 80,000 square foot depot, used to be a USPS facility, outfitted now with 4 megawatts of power and multiple charging stations and so forth, capable of handling hundreds of vehicles to give you a sense of the size of that. So that's kind of where things are on there. Let's back up and then go forward.

So if we back up, the big news in Nashville for us over the last quarter was actually our taking on what was called the temporary kind of depot that Waymo had stood up. This is actually a really important milestone for us because our staff took over. It was actually on June 9th and our staff took over from the Waymo staff and it was seamless. It was seamless.

We got credit from them. It was actually, it was a bit of a complicated weather day and different things happened. But anyway, it was noted that we are exceeding all of our SLAs with those guys, which is amazing. That's a great first step.

So then comes the opening of the depot, the purpose-built depot, which comes later this year in October or so. And then to your question, when does supply sharing start? We haven't said anything about that publicly except it'll happen before the end of the year, but it's still very much on track that, you know, before the end of the year you'll have the opportunity to get matched with Waymo on the Lyft app. So very much on track.

Great partnership with our partner, and I think they also feel great about us. Erin Brewer, CFO Yeah, Brad. And then on your question on the margin side, you know, Q2, obviously we expanded our EBITDA by 37%. Our guide for Q3 calls for margin expansion quarter on quarter.

So we feel great about the trajectory that we're on overall. I would say in terms of what's driving that, you know, it's kind of a lot of the similar themes that you've heard us talking about. First of all, we're in a growing market. There's still great opportunity.

You know, we've talked for a number of quarters about low-scale markets. Those have continued to grow higher than average. Canada continues to be a very strong market of course for us overall. And you take that very broad market opportunity and you have the foundation of operational excellence, as David said, just continuing to operate more effectively, driving better service for riders, investing as we do against, for example, really smart ways to invest rider incentives that continues to bring new riders to the platform, they ride more frequently.

And so as we get that scale and that operational excellence, of course there's natural leverage in the business. Cost discipline is another area that we have talked about going all the way back to investor day, being disciplined as we scale. I think we've done a nice job of that and we'll continue to do that as we grow. We've continued to grow very nicely in higher value modes and that mix as a part of our business has been an important dynamic.

But on so many levels, as I think about where we sit in the market, you know, we've had some great early progress with some new programs, for example, on B2B, but man, on so many levels we're just getting started there, so that's exciting. And then partnerships, I mean, reaching this milestone where you have almost one in three rides tagged to a partner. And what we've talked about historically holds true. Those rides tend to skew more toward higher value rides.

And so again, much more work to do there as we think about our margin expansion overall. But I really like the discipline and the trajectory that we've been on. I think it proves itself out in the numbers that we reported and where we're guiding. But those are really some of the foundational dynamics.

OPERATOR Our next question comes from John Blackledge with TD Cowen. You may now unmute and ask your question. John Blackledge, Analyst at TD Cowen Great, thank you. First question on the GB and rides growth gap.

There was an 11% gap between GB growth and rides growth. How should we think about that gap in the back half of the year? Would you expect it to close a bit? And then on AV, I thought it was interesting, call out the 20% rides growth in San Francisco in the… Just curious if you could talk about that dynamic and kind of your thoughts on that.

Thank you. David Risher, Chief Executive Officer Yeah, hey, John, it's David. I'll start with that and then Erin can pick up the gross bookings piece. So, yeah, glad you noticed that.

And I guess maybe, I think it sort of proves—it's probably too strong a word, but it underscores the thesis we have that as AV end of the market, this will ultimately be great for rideshare in part because it'll expand the TAM. And, you know, this is one of those things, you know, we've been saying for a while, we're starting to see data that proves that, you know, quarter after quarter after quarter. Frankly, you also hear it in the anecdotes. You hear people who say, you know, this opens up rideshare for me in a way that maybe I didn't necessarily want to use it in the past, but doesn't necessarily take away from my daily use of rideshare.

We've seen—brag another couple seconds on the team's performance—I mean, we've seen growth both in commutes, which serve all-time highs. Obviously San Francisco has a big commute market. We also see huge growth on the sort of leisure side, you know, everything from parties to gyms. Actually, it's really interesting.

More people are taking rideshare to gyms than ever before. So anyway, it's sort of an across-the-board growth story, which then layers on top of the AV story. And I think that they feed each other because people get used to taking rideshare; maybe their point of entry is through an AV and then they take, you might say, traditional or driver-driven rideshare, and back and forth. So that's what we're seeing.

We see it in a bunch of different places. San Francisco is the area we called out, and I think when I look at the transformation this industry is going through, it just makes me more excited, not less, that we've got a huge kind of road ahead of us. Erin Brewer, CFO And John, let me try to be helpful by talking a little bit about, for example, what we see as you think about gross bookings and rides and that overall mix as we head into Q3. So there are some seasonal impacts, right?

Q3 is by far our highest quarter for our bikes business. That business does carry a lower average gross bookings per ride. Obviously unit economics are super strong, so we love that, but it does have a mix influence as you think about gross bookings and rides overall. For FREE NOW, we're lapping that acquisition, right?

So compared to the previous year where we had two months, we'll have the full three months, so you have that dynamic. However, FREE NOW in the third quarter, sort of with the August holiday season, et cetera, tends to have a lower rides quarter overall. Those tend to be higher gross bookings value. So you have some of that mix effect with higher bikes, a little bit less FREE NOW happening as you're thinking about gross bookings per ride overall.

Zooming out a little bit, we provided some color commentary in our prepared remarks. It talks about rides growth in the second half and how we expect that to increase. That's not one factor, but really across our business overall as you think about core North America rideshare, our bikes business, or FREE NOW. So that growth is going to come from each of those dimensions.