Michael Liedtke/The Associated Press
Lyft's CFO can breathe easy — her boss isn't making her the fall person for a major earnings typo.
Lyft CEO David Risher took full responsibility for the typo in the company's earnings release that led the company's stock to surge more than 60% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
"Well, first of all, it's on me," Risher said in a Bloomberg interview on Wednesday. "There are a lot of eyes on this press release, but at the end of the day, my bad."
The press release reporting Lyft's fourth-quarter earnings originally stated that the company expected its profit margin to expand by 500 basis points in 2024. But the number should have been 50 basis points — which is one zero and around $630 million off.
It was a massive error, and shares of Lyft dropped in after-hours trading after Wall Street realized and the company issued a correction. After the market correction, Lyft shares leveled off and were up around 16% over the closing price.
Lyft's CEO said that while multiple people take hours to check and double-check earnings statements like these, it was still his fault. Addressing speculation that Lyft's CFO Erin Brewer was in the hot seat over the error, Risher said she is 100% safe in her role and that she and the team take the reports seriously.
"It's an unacceptable error," Risher said. "Ultimately it's on me, I'm the CEO."
While Risher said the typo was a "bad error," he also said that it was one zero in a lot of other pages. Within seconds of realizing the error, the CEO said Lyft quickly corrected the mistake. He said it's not about the mistake itself, but how you correct it.
The CEO said that an internal audit team will look at the mistake and figure out how to prevent it from happening again.
Additionally, Risher said that the incident showed how "we're not at the point where press releases can be written by AI."
Answering the natural follow-up question on everyone's mind, a Lyft spokesperson told Business Insider that no, the press release wasn't generated by AI.
