TIVP061: LYFT INC. (LYFT): THE KEY TO WINNING THE AV WARS?

W/ SHAWN O’MALLEY & DANIEL MAHNCKE

TIVP061: LYFT INC. (LYFT): THE KEY TO WINNING THE AV WARS? W/ SHAWN O’MALLEY & DANIEL MAHNCKE

01 March 2026

Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke break down the ride-sharing giant Lyft Inc. (ticker: LYFT) and discuss whether the company can regain ground against Uber, or whether it’s always destined to be #2. While Lyft has clawed back some market share, finally attained profitability, and is now growing internationally, Shawn finds Lyft most interesting as a potential acquisition target for a company like DoorDash, Amazon, or Alphabet.

In this episode, you’ll learn how Lyft has managed to survive at a fraction of Uber’s scale, why Lyft disappointed shareholders after its 2019 IPO, how Lyft’s new CEO (an Amazon alum) is turning things around, what corporate governance change happened recently to enable a takeover, and whether Lyft’s stock is attractively priced at current levels, plus so much more!

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • How Zimbabwe became the inspiration for Lyft
  • How Lyft’s co-founders used viral marketing to gain traction
  • Why scrappiness is in Lyft’s DNA 
  • How the company has actually managed to regain market share versus Uber
  • What Lyft did to achieve operating profitability for the first time this year
  • Why Lyft made sure to IPO before Uber
  • Why Lyft could be such an interesting acquisition target
  • How to think about modeling LYFT’s intrinsic value
  • Whether Shawn and Daniel add LYFT to their Intrinsic Value Portfolio
  • And much, much more!

Disclosure: This episode and the resources on this page are for informational and educational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. For full disclosures, see link.

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

[00:00:00] Shawn O’Malley: The market thinks Lyft is a loser and it has been as a standalone company, but to Amazon or Alphabet, it could be worth several times more than its puny market cap trades for.

[00:00:11] Daniel Mahncke: And at the same time, Lyft has just finally hit a scale to be operationally profitable, which makes an acquisition much more palatable.

[00:00:19] Shawn O’Malley: If Lyft is acquired, I could easily see its shares doubling from what is only a $7 billion market cap, despite being the second largest ride-sharing app in all of North America.

[00:00:34] Intro: You are listening to the Intrinsic Value Podcast by The Investor’s Podcast Network since 2014 with over 180 million downloads, we’ve learned directly from the world to best investors. Now we are applying those lessons to analyze businesses and investment opportunities every week, helping you uncover intrinsic value. And now here are your hosts, Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke.

[00:01:05] Daniel Mahncke: For anyone who has followed along with our podcast for a while now, you probably know that both Shawn and I are huge fans of Uber in the U.S. At least we’ve been happy to crown them as the winner of the ride-sharing Ross. So you’re probably a bit surprised to see that today we’ve got its competitor Lyft queued up as a pitch.

[00:01:23] Daniel Mahncke: And honestly, I’m a bit surprised too. So without all the context that we normally give in the intro. I just have to ask you, Shawn, why are we talking about Lyft in this episode?

[00:01:33] Shawn O’Malley: Yeah, you’re right. I’m probably the person least likely to pitch Lyft if you listen only to our bullishness on Uber. And to be clear, we both remain very excited about Uber’s future.

[00:01:41] Shawn O’Malley: I think that’s fair to say. But as we talked through the Uber thesis more and more, whether that be with our friends and the intrinsic value community, or even at investment conferences, I just kept coming back to this idea that there is, in fact something very interesting about Lyft, especially when you’re considering the bear arguments against Uber.

[00:01:58] Daniel Mahncke: And we’ll get into that, which is not to say that both you or I think Lyft alone can take meaningful market share for Uber. I think those days are long gone, but that Lyft may be worth significantly more to, let’s say, a Robotaxi competitor when plugged into their supply of vehicles than as a standalone business. Is that also how you think about it today?

[00:02:18] Shawn O’Malley: That’s the idea, thinking about Lyft as an acquisition target. And so for companies like Tesla, Amazon with ZX subsidiary or Alphabet with Waymo, there are some massive tech titans out there looking to build av-powered ride-sharing services. And while Uber is too big to be acquired at $170 billion market cap, they could instead opt to buy the second largest ride-sharing business in North America, which has a roughly 30% market share for as little as $10 billion or less.

[00:02:48] Shawn O’Malley: And so just for context, that is less than one 20th of the market price for Uber. To get you 30% of North America’s ride-sharing market share while Uber has the other 70%. And so the difference being that Uber has a much, much bigger international business contributing to that valuation differential between the two companies.

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