I don't know about Lyft but Uber says they lost money in Q4 2018, hopefully not in each sale but definitely in aggregate.
The money the got from customers for rides / food delivery didn’t cover the money they paid to the drivers / restaurants providing the service.
Edit: Ok, looking at the numbers more carefully they are still be positive after paying drivers / restaurants. But they lose money when the operating, marketing and administrative costs directly attributable to the sale are included.
I think the idea is those costs don’t scale linearly with the number of rides, so if you can increase the volume of rides which each have a small profit and hold the other operational costs constant or at least less than linear, you eventually get to profitability. That’s the theory anyway.
Sure, but right now they are losing money with every sale. Using their own "Core Platform Contribution Margin [which] demonstrates the margin that we generate after direct expenses. We believe that Core Platform Contribution Margin is a useful indicator of the economics of our Core Platform, as it does not include indirect unallocated research and development and general and administrative expenses (including expenses for ATG and Other Technology Programs)."
The money the got from customers for rides / food delivery didn’t cover the money they paid to the drivers / restaurants providing the service.
Edit: Ok, looking at the numbers more carefully they are still be positive after paying drivers / restaurants. But they lose money when the operating, marketing and administrative costs directly attributable to the sale are included.