Investing.com -- Lyft (NASDAQ:LYFT) shares surged more than 52% in after-hours trading Tuesday after its FQ4 results and guidance topped Wall Street estimates, only to lose a significant portion of these gains due to a significant typo in the report.
To be more specific, Lyft's Chief Financial Officer Erin Brewer revealed that the company had mistakenly reported an excessively high key margin in its earnings statement for Q4. Brewer clarified that the growth projection for 2024 was actually a more modest increase of 50 basis points, contrary to the previously stated expansion of 500 basis points.
LYFT was up 16.5% in premarket trading Wednesday.
The positive investor reaction came after the ride-sharing firm said its start to 2024, paves the way for a "meaningful margin expansion and our first full-year of positive free cash flow," Lyft said in its Q4 report on Tuesday.
Lyft reported a net loss of 26.3 million compared with a net loss $588.1 a year earlier, beating Wall Street estimates for earnings of $0.08 a share, while revenue of $1.22 billion was in-line with estimates.
Active riders on its platform jumped 10% to 22.4 million in the fourth quarter.
For Q1, the ride-hailing company guided gross bookings of about $3.5B to $3.6B.
Looking ahead, the company forecasts rides to grow in the mid-teens year-over-year, with gross Bookings growth expected to be slightly faster than rides growth year-over-year.
In the aftermath of the report, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) analysts raised their target price and estimates for LYFT.
"Near-term results better than expected, particularly on EBITDA, but looking into 2024 product innovation will matter as we continue to monitor for signs of durable differentiation vs peers," they wrote.
"Raise '24/'25 EBITDA by 6%/6%, PT to $12 (~10x EV/'25 EBITDA)."
Additional reporting by Senad Karaahmetovic