The typo, which actually appeared in several company documents on Tuesday, helped send Lyft shares up 67% in after-hours trading.
Still, the company reported that gross bookings had increased 17% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier, to $3.72 billion, above estimates of $3.67 billion.
Company shares Lyft Inc. soared almost 70% this week, although in reality it was due to an unusual error, for which the executive director himself, David Risher, took the blame. The fact: an extra zero.
“First of all, it’s my fault,” Risher said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television, taking responsibility for a typographical error in a press release issued Tuesday by the company, which wrongly projected that a specific measure of profit margin would grow 500 basis points, when it was actually 50. “This was a serious mistake,” he said, “but it was a zero in a press release.”
The typo, which actually appeared in several company documents on Tuesday, helped send Lyft shares up 67% in after-hours trading.
Still, the company reported that gross bookings had increased 17% in the fourth quarter from the same period a year earlier, to $3.72 billion, above estimates of $3.67 billion.
Risher said his team at Lyft took the bug very seriously, noting that it was corrected “within seconds of finding it.”
But in fact, on a call with analysts to discuss quarterly results, Lyft executives didn’t immediately note the error in their initial comments. Only Lyft CFO Erin Brewer began to address the company’s prospects for a 50 basis point expansion. It wasn’t until later in the call, when an analyst noted the discrepancy, that Brewer acknowledged that her perspective was “actually a correction of the press release.”
Finally, the company corrected the statement and regulatory documents.
Source: Ambito
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