Lyft Shares Soar 21% Over 3 Sessions As Industry Study Indicates Gains On Uber

Shares in Lyft
LYFT
are up 21% over the past three trading days, after an industry report showed it gaining ground on rival Uber
UBER
in June and apparently triggered a short squeeze.

Lyft’s stock ended Tuesday trading at $11.55, up from $9.56 on Thursday and above its year-end 2022 level of $11.02. It closed as high as $17.93 early in February before a weaker-than-expected Q4 earnings report sent the shares tumbling.

“It’s a cheap stock and at this point more could go right for Lyft than could go wrong,” says Daniel Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities. “It’s been such a disaster recently for investors and now bottom pickers are sniffing around, some of the bears are going into hibernation and covering their shorts.”

A catalyst for a 9% rise on Monday may have been a report from YipitData, an industry researcher that found Q2 ride-demand growth for Lyft more than doubled from Q1, rising to 15% from 7% while Uber slipped to 17% from 28%, according to a person who has seen the report. Yipit refused to release the study to Forbes. The data showed Lyft has 30% of the U.S. ride-share market vs. 70% for Uber, the person said.

In a separate report, also seen by Forbes, research advisors Gordon Haskette, said June marked the fourth consecutive month of Lyft achieving cheaper rides than Uber. Shares in Uber are up 5.3% since Thursday.

David Risher, who took over as Lyft CEO in April, has been focusing on the company’s core ride-sharing business in favor of other forms of mobility, such as scooters and bikes. Uber, by contrast, offers food delivery, freight and carshare services, leaving Lyft as a pure-play in ride sharing.

Risher previously worked at Amazon
AMZN
, where he was senior vice president of marketing and merchandising. Risher was appointed as Lyft looked to recover ground on Uber following disappointing financial results, replacing founders Logan Green and John Zimmer who stepped down from day-to-day management positions in March.

For the first quarter of 2023, Lyft reported it had narrowed its net loss to $187.6 million from $196.6 million in Q1 2022 after cutting operating costs.

Wall Street is expecting Q2 revenue of $1.02 billion and a 1.2-cent-a-share loss on the adjusted basis used by analysts, according to Bloomberg.