Lyft Inc. shares soared on Thursday after the ride-hailing company’s first-quarter results topped recently lowered expectations.

Wall Street analysts, however, had mixed reactions to the numbers. While some hailed the stronger-than-expected quarter as evidence of resilience in the business, others pointed to a potentially prolonged slowdown in a post-Covid world that would delay Lyft’s path to profitability.

Shares of the company jumped as much as 22 per cent as of 10 a.m. in New York, snapping a five-day decline. Peer Uber’s shares rose 9.3 per cent.

Here’s a round up of the analyst comments after the results.

Piper Sandler, Alexander Potter
(Cut to neutral from overweight, price target US$31 from US$63)

“Due to Covid-19, we have less faith in the attractiveness of the ride-hailing theme over the next 1+ years.”

“In the post-Covid era, we think health concerns may discourage riders from quickly returning to the Lyft platform.”

“It now appears that higher demand in March was a headfake, likely driven by pre-shutdown Costco runs or last-minute commutes. Ridership has imploded since then, and like Lyft, we don’t know how/when the recovery will unfold.”

Citi, Itay Michaeli
(Buy, price target US$49)

“With Lyft shares having pulled back ahead of the first-quarter report, we think a positive share price reaction is warranted on what we regard as an encouraging quarter.”

“While the focus is clearly more on second quarter and beyond, first quarter serves as a positive read for the progression of underlying industry fundamentals, and is therefore a positive read for Uber.”

RBC Capital Markets, Mark Mahaney
(Outperform, price target US$51 from US$47)

“All in, first-quarter fundamental trends were mixed, with revenue growth decelerating 29 points to 23 per cent, but Ebitda loss cut by more than 50 per cent y/y.”

“Rides deteriorated sharply into April and were down 75 per cent y/y for the month, but have now grown w/w for 3 straight weeks.”

Wedbush, Ygal Arounian
(Outperform, price target US$36 from US$30)

“As bad as it sounds, the Street was bracing for worse on first quarter, and overall cost cuts/road to profitability was some relative good news in a dark time.”

“There are some darker days ahead for Lyft, however the Street should feel more confident on its business model and cost structure to weather this Category 5 dark Covid-19 economic storm after last night.”

MKM Partners, Rohit Kulkarni
(Neutral, price target US$33 from US$53)

“Shares were up 15 per cent last night as we think investors were relieved that things don’t appear to be getting ‘more worse’ in certain pockets in April.”

“While Lyft announced US$300 million in annualized cost reductions, we think Lyft’s Ebitda profitability has been pushed out to first half of 2022. This means the company would likely continue to burn cash for another eight quarters or so.”