Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Aug 11, 2026
Lyft, Inc. (LYFT)
A forensic read on Lyft, Inc. built from its complete SEC filings — financial-health screens, earnings quality, red flags and a price-aware rating. Reproducible math, not opinion.
D · Weak — demands caution
Forensic grade
Distress
Financial health
-2.8
Distress distance
Watch
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
2.3
P / E (ttm)
86.9%
ROE
$6.6B
Market cap
9.2%
Revenue growth
This free snapshot doesn't read filing or proxy text, so the auditor-quality and governance checks that can lower a grade were not evaluated (red flags, auditor quality, say on pay, board independence). Those checks only ever lower a grade, so the full analysis can land below the grade above but never above it — treat it as the most favourable reading, not the settled one.
Lyft, Inc. earns a D (Weak — demands caution) forensic quality grade, and its balance-sheet distress test reads -2.8, placing it in the Distress zone. 5 forensic signals were flagged in its latest SEC filings, led by accruals ratio (% of noa).
What the filings flag
+135.6%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +135.6% relative to their own average in FY2025 — scaled by NOA itself, not total assets (see the Forensic Screens card's differently-scaled Sloan Accrual Ratio for that read). Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash; Richardson/Sloan link high accruals to weaker future returns as they reverse. The cash-flow cross-check agrees: reported earnings ran ahead of operating cash by 88% of net operating assets.
-4.3%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -4.3% in the latest fiscal year and rising from -98% — well below its ~10% cost of capital, so reinvested dollars may be destroying value, not building it.
+5.6%/yr
FY2022–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +18% over the last 3 years to FY2025 (+5.6%/yr). The count is growing: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~5.6% shaved off per-share growth every year — total profit has to grow that much just to keep earnings-per-share flat, and a stake held since FY2022 has been diluted ~15%.
0.76×
FY2023–FY2025
Cash conversion.Over FY2023–FY2025, operating cash flow was 0.76× cumulative net income. Cash is lagging reported profit. The shortfall is profit tied up in working capital rather than collected — the accrual and receivables lines below show where.
5% of rev
FY2025
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$6.32B
Revenue Growth YoY+9.2%
Revenue CAGR (3yr)+15.5%
Net Margin45.0%
Return on Equity86.9%
Debt / Equity0.32x
The forensic grade and screens above are free — no account needed. Want the AI investment read on top — the 0–100 rating, thesis, bull-vs-bear, red flags and the 12-month scenario, written from Lyft, Inc.'s actual 10-K/10-Q/8-K filings?
Data from SEC EDGAR public filings · metrics as of Aug 11, 2026. Forensic signals flag probability, not certainty.
Lyft, Inc. (LYFT) Stock — Forensic Analysis, Red Flags & Rating | Stockonomy · Stockonomy
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 5% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.77 per diluted share. The cost of it is not in the cash flow — no cash left the business — it is in the count, and there it has run at about 5.6% a year and is falling.