Lyft stock is in an interesting position after the ride-sharing app's third-quarter earnings
The shares of LYFT Inc (NYSE:LYFT) are up 0.5% to trade at $10.64 at last check. The stock was lower at the open this morning, after the ride-share company's third-quarter gross booking fell short of rival Uber's (UBER) and fourth-quarter bookings guidance came in below Wall Street's estimates. However, Lyft's own third-quarter earnings and revenue beat forecasts, leading to no less than five price-target hikes, the highest coming from Barclays up to $14.
Coming into today, analysts were hesitant toward LYFT, with 24 of the 28 brokerages in coverage maintaining "hold" or worse ratings. And with short interest already down 8.8% in the most recent reporting period yet 16% of LYFT's total available float still sold short, a bearish exodus could take place. At the stock's average pace of trading, it would take shorts four trading days to buy back their bearish bets.
On the charts, LYFT remains below a confluence of moving averages, including its 50- 80- and 100-day trendlines. Down 35.4% over of the last nine months, the stock has recently also ceded its year-to-date breakeven mark.
Drilling down to today's options activity, 12,000 calls and 14,000 puts have crossed the tape so far, volume that's six times the average intraday amount. Most popular is the weekly 11/10 9-strike put, followed by the 8.50-strike put in the standard November series, with new positions being bought to open at the latter.
Puts have been growing in popularity, per the stock's 50-day call/put volume ratio of 0.51, which stands in the 93rd annual percentile at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX). While the ratio indicates calls still outnumber puts on an absolute basis, the high percentile suggests puts have been picked up at a faster-than-usual clip in the last two months.