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Bloomberg Talks

Lyft CEO David Risher Talks Fourth-Quarter Results

11 Feb 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.672 - 5.121 Stephen Carroll

Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made.

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5.622 - 10.011 Caroline Hyde

And I'm Caroline Hepke in London. We're the hosts of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast.

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10.391 - 15.001 Stephen Carroll

We're up early every weekday, keeping an eye on what's happening across Europe and around the world.

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15.422 - 21.634 Caroline Hyde

We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled, and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going.

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21.698 - 27.166 Stephen Carroll

From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now.

27.206 - 32.633 Caroline Hyde

And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy.

33.154 - 37.48 Stephen Carroll

We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break.

37.941 - 42.587 Caroline Hyde

So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens.

43.028 - 45.03 Stephen Carroll

It's smart, calm and to the point.

Chapter 2: What were Lyft's fourth-quarter results and market reactions?

241.435 - 256.235 David Risher

And bottom line growth getting to a billion dollars of adjusted EBITDA, which would be 4% margin, very much on track for that. But what it means is you've got to be really smart about managing your costs. You've got to be really good about kind of managing your quality. And we're doing really well on both. We've just made progress.

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256.335 - 260.16 David Risher

As I say, we've had our best profitable, highest profitable quarter just this past Q4.

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260.541 - 274.32 Ed Ludlow

I think, therefore, go back to the AV world because there is this ongoing anxiety that the competition is just going to get so fierce. Are you set up to win? What are you saying to convince the investor base they shouldn't be selling off your shares like this?

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274.722 - 293.217 David Risher

Yeah, I think that the way to think about AVs is they're going to be good for the whole industry, the rideshare industry, because as I say, it's a good new product at a lower cost. And I think why we are particularly well positioned is we have demand that runs to the two, three, four million people a day level. So we have lots of demand for this. And you know what they want?

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293.437 - 305.375 David Risher

They want a fast, reliable pickup that's going to get them where they want to go. Sometimes they'll want to be driven by a human, sometimes by a robot, just kind of depends. And so this idea of a hybrid network, I think it's a real strength, particularly when you sort of marry it with fleet management.

305.395 - 314.647 Unknown

Is there a case study for you to reflect on in real terms then, like Atlanta May Mobility? What are you learning there? By the way, what's the status of it in terms of like fully driverless, et cetera?

314.687 - 329.484 David Risher

Yeah, for sure. So we're in Atlanta. We still have safety drivers in the car just to make sure everything is going well. And, you know, because we want this to be an incredibly high quality, incredibly safe experience. What we're learning is people love it. I mean, this is the interesting thing. People before they, when they hear about AVs, they're often a little skeptical.

329.544 - 344.479 David Risher

They sound like, I'm not sure I'm going to be excited about taking a car that's driven by a robot. You know, five minutes later, they've kind of fallen in love. And that's kind of what we're seeing. The utilization is high, like what's the metric? Yeah, super high, super high. Basically, I mean, as much supply as we can get, we can put on the road because there's plenty of demand for these things.

344.879 - 358.112 David Risher

I think if you want to look at case study for broadly speaking, maybe look at the transition from DVDs to streaming, right? It's a similar sort of technology shift. And look how big streaming is today compared to DVDs in the past. It's gonna be that kind of wave.

Chapter 3: How does David Risher define a 'blowout quarter' for Lyft?

383.515 - 395.889 David Risher

Yeah. I mean, look, this has been a big, big learning for us. Obviously, there's a huge snowstorm. I'm told that we're about 75% dugout right now, which is amazing, but that takes a lot of work, a lot of just physical labor to make sure that the bike stations are available.

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395.909 - 409.084 David Risher

I think people have taken something like half a million rides in the last couple of days, which is pretty amazing considering the cold and the snow. Anyway, working super closely with the city on it, really making sure that the availability of these bikes, which as you say, we run behind the scenes as high as we can get it.

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409.064 - 428.153 Unknown

I asked Bloomberg tech producer Justin Lau to pop his head out the window and check, because here in the Bay, obviously, we don't get confronted by snow. But I went back and read my history about the micromobility part of the business. It is a smaller part on a revenue basis, but clearly it's still important to you. It is. How important? Yeah.

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428.133 - 442.444 David Risher

I mean, look, as you say, financially, it's relatively small, but this is the future. Look, when you talk about AVs, that's part of the future. When you talk about micromobility, once people get on an e-bike, I say this sometimes, it's kind of like meeting a person who's just started pickleball. Like they have to tell you about it, how amazing this thing is.

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442.664 - 455.271 David Risher

Same with e-bikes, you know what I mean? So it's like, so this is sometimes you can see the future. And if you look out three, five, 10 years, you're going to see more people on e-bikes. You're going to see more people in self-driving cars. And, you know, and of course you're also going to see people in human driven cars and that's what we're building.

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