Lyft Overhauls Management, Names New CEO
(ticker: LYFT) announced Monday evening that co-founders Logan Green, the current CEO, and John Zimmer, the current president, are moving into nonexecutive roles on the board.
The change for Green is effective April 17. The change for Zimmer is effective June 30.
David Risher, who has been on the Lyft board since July 2021, has been named as the incoming CEO.
Before Lyft, Risher was a general manager at
(MSFT) and served as
Amazon.com
’s
(AMZN) first head of product and head of U.S. retail. There is still a thank you from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to Risher on the Amazon website.
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“Building Lyft with John over the last 16 years has been the adventure of a lifetime,” Green said in a news release. “Billions of rides later, our industry is defined by the model of ride-sharing that Lyft pioneered. All founders eventually find the right moment to step back and the right leaders to take their company forward.”
Lyft stock was up 3.7% in after hours trading at $9.95 a share. Shares dropped 2.7% in regular trading Monday while the
gained 0.2% and the
fell 0.5%.
Lyft shares have struggled recently. The stock dropped 36% on Feb. 10 after the company gave disappointing guidance when reporting fourth-quarter numbers.
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For the December quarter, Lyft reported revenue of $1.2 billion. For the first quarter, Lyft projected revenue of $975 million, falling short the $1.1 billion Street consensus.
“This has been a Twilight Zone situation at Lyft with disaster communication and execution while losing market share to big brother Uber,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Barron’s in an emailed statement. “Uber has gained significant share while the Street lost all confidence in the leadership at Lyft.”
A lack of confidence is reflected in shares. Lyft stock is off about 89% from its all time high of $88.60, reached after its IPO in March 2019. Shares of Lyft peer
(UBER) have fared better. Uber stock is down about 52% from its all time high of $64.05, reached in February 2021.
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Recent sales performance at Uber has been better than Lyft as well. Uber sales are expected to be $8.6 billion in the first quarter of 2023, flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2022.
Ives rates Uber shares Buy. His price target is $40 a share. He rates Lyft shares Hold. His price target for that stock is $13.
Ives’ ratings align with most of Wall Street. Uber is the more popular stock with 89% of analysts covering shares rating them Buy. The average Buy-rating ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 is about 58%. About 21% of analysts covering Lyft stock rate shares Buy.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
