Elaine Paul
Analyst · Doug Anmuth with JPMorgan
Thanks, Logan, and good afternoon, everybody. In the second quarter, we delivered revenues of $991 million, representing an increase of 13% versus Q1 and 30% versus last year. Q2 revenue was just 3% below the all-time peak reached in Q4 of 2019. Revenue growth was driven primarily by rideshare, which was up 27% year-over-year in Q2. Relative to guidance, Q2 revenues came in towards the high end of our range. Active Riders grew by more than 2 million versus Q1 and were the highest they've been since early 2020. Active Riders were 19.9 million in Q2, up 12% quarter-over-quarter and 16% versus last year. Sequential new rider growth outpaced the growth of returning riders, which is great to see since it speaks to the runway in front of us. Q2 revenue per Active Rider of $49.89 was the second highest it has ever been. Revenue per Active Rider grew by $0.71 versus Q1 and by $5.26 versus Q2 of last year. The increase was driven by higher revenue per ride associated with longer trips. Two major trends are driving this: accelerated growth we've seen in Lyft business as well as a strong pickup in travel. Before I move on, I want to note that unless otherwise indicated, all income statement measures are non-GAAP and exclude stock-based compensation and other select items as detailed in our earnings release. A reconciliation of historical GAAP to non-GAAP results is available on our Investor Relations website and may be found in our earnings release, which was furnished with our Form 8-K filed today with the SEC. Q2 contribution significantly outperformed versus guidance. Contribution was $590 million, up 18% versus Q1 and up 31% versus Q2 '21. This is roughly $30 million better than the high end of our contribution outlet of $560 million. Relative to our guidance, around half of the beat or $15.5 million was driven by bike share related accounting adjustments that reduced cost of revenue. This is inclusive of $3.2 million depreciation benefit. The remaining upside was driven by deliberate management actions that drove incremental growth and cost savings. Contribution margin in the second quarter was 59.6% and was 360 basis points higher than our guidance of 6%. The bike share items I just discussed delivered roughly 160 basis points of this outperformance. Relative to Q1 2022, contribution margin increased by approximately 220 basis points, reflecting deliberate management actions that drove improved per ride unit economics. As a reminder, contribution excludes changes to the liabilities for insurance required by regulatory agencies attributable to historical periods. In the second quarter, there was adverse development of $275 million. This was partly offset by a $37 million accounting gain and resulted in a net impact to GAAP cost of revenue of $239 million. This adverse development reflects insurance industry trends. The commercial auto industry have been experiencing higher costs and increasing insurance losses. Like many other services, auto repair and health care have become more expensive, reflecting the broad impact of inflation on both wages and materials given supply constraints as well as challenging litigation trends. Furthermore, our Q2 adverse development is primarily associated with a legacy third-party claims administrator, who did not resolve legacy claims as effectively as we would have expected. These claims predate the risk transfer structure that we've been implementing since Q4 of 2019, which means we do not have the same exposure to additional volatility on legacy claims in future periods. At this point, around 90% of the claims that are handled by our legacy claims administrator, which date back to 2018 are resolved. Let's move to operating expenses below cost of revenue. In the aggregate, these expenses came in well below guidance primarily driven by cost savings in R&D and sales and marketing. These savings are the direct result of actions we took in the quarter to address macroeconomic uncertainty. Let me start with operations and support. As a percentage of revenue, operations and support was 10%, down 60 basis points from Q1 and down 130 basis points from Q2 '21. In absolute terms, this expense was $98.6 million in Q2 and includes a $5 million benefit from an accounting adjustment related to our bike share systems. Relative to Q1 '22 and to Q2 of last year, we achieved better leverage on our operations and support expense even as ride volumes and driver supply grew. R&D was 10.7% of revenue in Q2, down 100 basis points from Q1 and 630 basis points down from Q2 '21. In absolute terms, R&D expense was $105.7 million in Q2. Year-over-year comparisons reflect the impact of our divestiture of our Level 5 self-driving division that closed in July of last year. Relative to Q1, R&D increased by just $3 million, which was below guidance that implied an $18 million to $25 million increase in R&D expense quarter-over-quarter. We were able to do this by streamlining the number of priorities we are working on and considerably limiting hiring. Sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue was 13% in Q2, roughly flat with Q1 and up 140 basis points versus Q2 of '21. In absolute terms, sales and marketing expense was $128.3 million. The $13.5 million increase in sales and marketing versus Q1 was below guidance of an increase of $19 million to $26 million. Relative to Q1, this incremental spending reflects precommitted brand marketing and driver referral bonuses. Within sales and marketing, incentives were 3% of revenue. G&A expense as a percentage of revenue was 20.6% in Q2, up 160 basis points from Q1 and up 60 basis points versus Q2 '21. In absolute terms, G&A expense was $203.7 million and includes a $12 million accounting benefit driven primarily by tax reserve releases that were identified during the quarter. Relative to guidance, G&A was incrementally higher than anticipated driven primarily by policy. In terms of the bottom line, our Q2 adjusted EBITDA profit of $79.1 million was the highest in our company's history. It also exceeded the top end of our $10 million to $20 million outlook by $59.1 million. This outperformance reflects actions we took to control costs and drive profits during the quarter in addition to business outperformance and accounting tailwinds. In total, Q2 adjusted EBITDA included $29 million of accounting tailwinds. We ended Q2 of '22 with unrestricted cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments of $1.8 billion. The sequential change in unrestricted cash was driven primarily by an insurance collateral requirement, which moved funds from unrestricted into restricted cash as well as our acquisition of PBSC. Before I move to our outlook, it's important to note that geopolitical dynamics and macroeconomic factors are impossible to predict with any certainty. Future conditions can change rapidly and affect our results. We are taking a prudent approach to managing our business. First, like many companies, we are keeping a close eye on consumer behavior. Even in a recessionary environment, transportation is a historically durable category of consumer spending. And the depth of our network means that we can deliver a wide range of price points to riders from bikes to wait and save shared rides to priority pickup. In addition, more people may turn to rideshare for supplemental earnings opportunities, serving as a tailwind to organic driver supply growth. Second, as I mentioned earlier, insurance costs were being affected by inflationary pressures. In Q3, we expect this will impact our contribution margin. We've been actively working to mitigate the impact and we aren't done. We believe that over time, we can offset higher insurance costs through both pricing and also product and engineering efforts that deliver better per ride unit economics and continue advancing the safety of our network. Internally, we continue to drive forward initiatives to reduce the frequency and severity of accidents, thereby also bringing down the cost of insurance. This includes further leveraging our risk models to assess behavioral and environmental risk factors. Our in-house mapping technology, Lyft maps, can help enable safer, cost-optimized routes that drive additional insurance savings. In terms of controlling our corporate overhead, we have materially pulled back on hiring, cut T&E budgets. And we'll continue scrutinizing every cost line item to ensure we are demonstrating strong discipline. Over a few quarters, we expect higher insurance costs will be mitigated by improving leverage. They will provide some near-term headwinds. Now let me share our outlook. We expect Q3 revenues of between $1.040 billion and $1.060 billion, which implies growth of between 5% and 7% versus Q2 and growth of 20% and 23% versus Q3 last year. Rideshare rides grew almost 4% month-over-month in July, and we expect an acceleration in September with back-to-school. We also expect an incremental tailwind from bikes and scooters in Q3. Given H1 actuals and our Q3 outlook, we now expect full year 2022 revenue growth will be slower than the 36% achieved in 2021. In terms of profitability, we expect Q3 contribution margin to be roughly 55%. This implies contribution of $572 million to $583 million. We expect operating expenses below cost of revenue will decrease slightly in Q3 versus Q2 as a percentage of revenue. As a result of the above, we expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA of $55 million to $65 million. This implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 5% to 6%. Excluding the accounting tailwinds in Q2 of $15.5 million in contribution and $29 million in adjusted EBITDA, for every $1 of incremental revenue in Q3, the high end of our outlook implies $0.12 will flow to contribution and $0.22 will flow to adjusted EBITDA. We recognize the importance of expanding the leverage in our business and growing our profits, and we are committed to driving both forward. With that, let me turn it over to John.