More than a decade into its life, Lyft is bringing on a new chief executive officer. On Monday afternoon, the company announced current CEO and co-founder Logan Green would hand day-to-day operations of Lyft to David Risher, a former Amazon executive, on April 17th. That same day, Green will take over as chair of Lyft’s board of directors. The announcement is part of a larger executive shuffle that will also see Lyft president and co-founder John Zimmer move to the company’s board where he will serve as its vice chair. Zimmer’s last day as president will be June 30th.
Green and Zimmer founded Lyft in 2012 and successfully took the company public in 2019. Since its IPO, however, the value of Lyft’s stock has dropped dramatically. Following an initial high of $78.29 per share in 2019, the stock hit a record low of $9.60 per share earlier today. On February 9th, the day Lyft announced its Q4 2022 results, the stock shed 36 percent of its value after Green delivered what was widely considered one of the worst earnings calls in recent memory, telling investors the company would need to increase spending to stay competitive with Uber. To say Lyft’s new CEO has his work cut out for him would be an understatement. The company has never reported a profit, and, barring a surprise breakthrough in autonomous driving, it has a difficult path ahead due to the economics of ride-sharing. Still, Risher is definitely qualified to turn Lyft around having previously served as Amazon’s first head of product and head of US retail.
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Igor Bonifacic