Lyft launches a repurchase, but the key demand metric’s forecast is poor.

Lyft Inc., a ride-hailing company that aims to remain competitive with rival Uber Technologies Inc. on pricing and service, launched a new buyback program on Tuesday, but its prediction for a key demand statistic fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.

Lyft (LYFT) reported that it anticipated first-quarter gross bookings, which gauge how much the firm charges users for rides and other services, to be between $4.05 billion and $4.2 billion, slightly less than the $4.24 billion that Wall Street had predicted. According to the company’s earnings release, “the recent pricing environment in the U.S. market.”

Despite a 15% year-over-year increase, Lyft’s fourth-quarter gross bookings of $4.28 billion fell short of FactSet’s $4.32 billion prediction. Its $1.55 billion in revenue was just slightly less than the $1.56 billion analysts had predicted. Using GAAP, Lyft made 15 cents per share. Wall Street predicted a loss of one cent per share.

According to the corporation, the repurchase of up to $500 million worth of its stock has been approved by the board.

After business hours on Tuesday, shares fell 10%.

As it attempts to increase profitability and begins to generate positive free cash flow, Lyft released the figures. Throughout the quarter, there was an improvement in rides, active riders, and service speeds.

Nevertheless, Uber’s stock dropped last week after the company’s own gross-bookings forecast failed to meet expectations. The influence of harsher weather and natural calamities, such as the fires in Los Angeles last month, as well as factors like foreign exchange were mentioned by analysts.

In the meantime, the ride-hailing industry’s intentions to increase the number of autonomous cars in its fleets have drawn increased attention from Wall Street.

“We’re in advanced discussions with a number of other partners,” David Risher, the CEO of Lyft, told MarketWatch in a statement. “The AV future will have many players across the value chain, including several emerging behind the scenes.”

He continued: “We believe the more AVs, the more the rideshare market expands and the better Lyft does.”

In a Monday post on X, Risher stated that the business intended to start offering rides in Dallas in autonomous vehicles as early as 2026. The vehicles would be owned by Marubeni, a Japanese company that, among other things, oversees automobile fleets, and they would be equipped with Mobileye Global Inc.’s (MBLY) self-driving technology.

In the upcoming months, the ride-sharing business said it intended to extend those services to additional cities. In November, Lyft announced a cooperation with Mobileye.

Lyft announced last week that it was partnering with Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, and that it has integrated Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, into its customer service offerings. According to Lyft, the partnership would enable it to advance its AI technology in other places.

In a research note published last month, BofA analysts predicted that gig economy and autonomous car companies would gain from incoming U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s proposal for a federal statute to regulate these industries rather than a patchwork of state laws.

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During last week’s earnings call, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated that “many, many more players” were expected to emerge and that it might take some time before the financial benefits of autonomous vehicle technology materialize.

However, he stated that clear laws, strict safety and service requirements, and less expensive hardware will be necessary for autonomous vehicles.

“There are national regulations, state regulations, city regulations, it’s pretty complicated,” he stated. “Obviously, regulators have to get comfortable with this new technology on the streets affecting our every day.”

“Second, in order to get regulators comfortable, we think you need a consistently superhuman safety record,” he said. “We do not believe that an autonomous driving can outperform a human. We have the potential to surpass humans by many times, in my opinion.