Forensic Analysis · Professional & Commercial Services · as of Nov 9, 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
-3.4
Distress distance
Watch
Earnings quality
5
Forensic signals
140.8%
ROE
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 (auditor quality, say on pay, board independence, going concern). 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 -3.4, 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
+118.6%
FY2024→FY2025
Accruals ratio (% of NOA).Net operating assets grew +118.6% relative to their own average in FY2025 — scaled by NOA itself, not by total assets, which is what the Forensic Screens card's own accrual row divides by. Accruals are building sharply — a large slice of profit sits in operating assets, not cash. An accrual is a claim that still has to be collected or written down, so the gap resolves in a later period whichever way it goes. Net operating assets also rose $324.5M through acquisitions (increase in goodwill and intangibles); that purchase is investing and is excluded from this ratio. A cash-flow measure on the same base agrees: reported earnings ran ahead of operating cash by 88% of net operating assets, against an accruals ratio of 118.6%. The two are computed differently: the accruals ratio is the change in net operating assets over average net operating assets, while the cash-flow figure is net income less operating cash flow over that same average.Accruals ratio: the year-over-year change in net operating assets, relative to their own average.NOA (net operating assets): the money tied up in running the business, operating assets minus operating liabilities.
-7.0%
FY2025
Return on invested capital.Return on invested capital is -7.0% in the latest fiscal year. $965M of the $2.1B base at FY2025 is short-term investments (45.3%) — securities held beside cash, which the base keeps because only cash is subtracted from it; they earn the balance sheet's yield, which is not in the operating profit above, so the loss on the operating capital is larger than this rate shows.
0.76×
FY2023–FY2025
Cash conversion.Over FY2023–FY2025, cumulative 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.Cash conversion: operating cash flow divided by net income, the share of profit that arrived as cash.
+4.1%/yr
FY2023–FY2025
Share-count dilution.Diluted share count changed +8% over the last 2 years to FY2025 (+4.1%/yr). The count is growing — 385.3M shares in FY2023, 417.7M in FY2025: more stock was issued than repurchased over this window, so aggregate results grew faster than their per-share equivalents. That's ~4.1% 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 FY2023 has been diluted ~8%.
5% of rev
FY2025
Stock-based comp load.Stock-based compensation ran 5% of revenue in FY2025 — about $0.77 per diluted share. No cash left the business to pay it, which is why operating cash flow adds it back. Net of repurchases the diluted count still rose about 4.1% a year across FY2023–FY2025, and the rate is falling. Stock compensation is one source of that issuance; acquisition consideration, equity raises, convertibles and other employee plans also net into the count, and these figures do not separate them.
Key fundamentals
Latest Revenue$6.32B
Revenue Growth YoY+9.2%
Revenue CAGR (2yr)+19.8%
Net Margin45.0%
Return on Equity140.8%
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?