Lyft, a ride-hailing service in the United States, reported today its second quarter financial results after the bell. The company's overall performance was better than the second quarter of last year, which was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and the subsequent lockdowns.Lyft also achieved positive adjusted EBITDA for the quarter. This profit metric is popular among technology startups that are yet to earn net income. Lyft's profitability calculation uses a more strict method to calculate profitability. The adjusted EBITDA was $23.8 Million for the second quarter.During Tuesday's earnings call, company executives enjoyed celebrating the achievement. Logan Green, co-founder and CEO of the company, stated that this quarter, they reached a milestone that has been in our sights for a while. He noted that last year, the company was facing a unique global pandemic that literally halted travel and that Proposition 22 was being played out in California.In Q2 2020, the company's adjusted EBITDA hit a low point. It was -$280 millions. Lyft has seen successive gains in adjusted EBITDA every quarter since then. In its most recent quarter, the adjusted EBITDA margin of Lyft was 3%. Lyft promised investors adjusted profits and delivered.After-hours trading saw Lyft shares rise by nearly 7% following the release of its financial report.Lyft reported revenues of $765 million for the second quarter. This is more than twice the $339.3million million it earned during the same period last fiscal year. This is quite remarkable, but remember that last year the COVID-19 pandemic was ravaging the ride-hailing industry and economy. We expected it.Importantly, Lyfts Q2 revenue grew 25.6% over last quarters $609 million. Lyft's Q2 revenue grew 25.6% despite the fact that there were more cases in the United States due to the delta COVID-19 variation.Lyft reported that 17.1 million people were using its service in the second quarter. This is 97% more than the 8.68 millions riders it had in the same period lastyear. Lyft reported that it had 13.49million active users in its first quarter. In the second quarter, Lyft saw a higher revenue per active user ($44.63) than in Q2 of last year ($39.06). The Q1 2021 result of $45.13 was slightly lower than the company's revenue per active rider.According to Yahoo Finance data, Lyft's growth exceeded street expectations. They had expected revenues of $696.2million. Lyft still loses money despite this growth when all costs are taken into account. Lyft reported a net loss in the second quarter of $251.9 million, which is 42% less than the $437.1million it lost last year. However, this still represents a very negative number.According to the company, net loss for the second quarter included $207.8 millions of stock-based compensation expenses and related payroll taxes and $20.4 million related to an earlier disclosed agreement to reinsure some legacy auto insurance liabilities.Lyft's second quarter cost of revenue related expenses increased, but that was expected considering how much the company's revenues grew in comparison to the previous year. G&A expenses were also reduced, as was its operations and support line. R&D and S&M costs both increased in the quarter that ended in January compared to the previous year.Let's not forget cash. Lyft's operations spent $37.5 million cash in the quarter, despite generating positive adjusted EBITDA over the past three months. Lyft's operations haven't generated positive cash flow since Q3 2019, Lyft has $2 billion of cash available to support its growth, but don't be alarmed.Lyfts business appears to be maturing and becoming more profitable than ever before. The contribution margin of the company, which is a non-GAAP number that indicates profitability of its ride-hailing business without corporate costs, increased to 59.1% during the second quarter, a record. The metric dropped to 34.6% in the year-ago period, the worst result since Q1 2017.Lyft has ended Level 5, its expensive autonomous vehicle technology program. Lyft sold Level 5 Toyotas Woven Planet Holdings. The deal was closed July 13. The company stated that it expected to eliminate approximately $20 million in related costs during the third quarter. This is a significant reduction from the second quarter.This does not mean that the company isn't interested in the robotaxi business.Lyft announced last month that it has partnered with Ford and Argo AI to launch at most 1,000 self-driving cars on Lyft's ride-hailing system in various cities. The partnership will begin with Austin and Miami. Lyft will soon make the first Ford self-driving cars available in Miami with Argos autonomous car technology.TechCrunch is monitoring the Lyft call, and will update this story if necessary.
