Skip to main content

Bird board backs new scooter boss

Micromobility company Bird is boosting its president, Shane Torchiana, to CEO status in a “long-planned” shakeup that sees founding chief executive Travis VanderZanden further stripped of power.

Bird’s board also announced two other appointments: Former Archer Aviation chief financial officer Ben Lu has joined as Bird’s new CFO, taking over the role from Yibo Ling, and Bird engineering executive Lance Bradley has been promoted to chief technology officer — a role that was formerly held by product head Justin Balthrop. Amidst the shuffle, VanderZanden will stay on as chairman of Bird’s board.

Less than three months ago, VanderZanden served as both president and CEO of Bird, but the longtime startup executive stepped down from his role as president in June, after Bird was hit was a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange. When Bird went public by merging with a SPAC last year, the company began trading at $8.40 per share, yet a whole lot’s changed since then. The scooter rental company closed out regular trading today at a dreary $0.40 per share with a market cap around $100 million. To put its current cap in perspective: Bird has raised a whopping $1.14 billion to date, according to Pitchbook.

Bird’s had a rough go of it lately. The firm burned $310 million in the second quarter of 2022, yet it also saw its quarterly revenue rebound to $76.7 million — a noteworthy (28%) jump up from the same quarter last year.

Bird framed the leadership restructuring as part of its journey to profitability. “The organizational changes announced today reaffirm our commitment to positioning Bird for long-term profitable growth,” said VanderZanden, who called the reorg a “long-planned transition.”

“Under new leadership, the company will continue to prioritize cost optimization, without losing sight of our long-term commitment to making cities more livable and sustainable,” he added.

Bird board backs new scooter boss by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/pzKnXHb
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Max Q: Psyche(d)

In this issue: SpaceX launches NASA asteroid mission, news from Relativity Space and more. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h6Kjrde via IFTTT
Post a Comment
Read more

Max Q: Anomalous

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week wasn’t the most successful for spaceflight missions. We’ll get into that a bit more below. In this issue: First up, a botched launch from Virgin Orbit… …followed by one from ABL Space Systems News from Rocket Lab, World View and more Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future After Virgin Orbit’s launch failure last Monday, during which the mission experienced an  “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit, I went back over the company’s financials — and things aren’t looking good. For Virgin Orbit, this year has likely been completely turned on its head. The company was aiming for three launches this year, but everything will remain grounded until the cause of the anomaly has been identified and resolved. It’s unclear how long that will take, but likely at least three months. Add this delay to Virgin’s dwindling cash reserves and you have a foundation that’s suddenly much shakier than before. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What’s Stripe’s deal?

Welcome to  The Interchange ! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up  here  so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. —  Mary Ann Stripe eyes exit, reportedly tried raising at a lower valuation The big news in fintech this week revolved around payments giant Stripe . On January 26, my Equity Podcast co-host and overall amazingly talented reporter Natasha Mascarenhas and I teamed up to write about how Stripe had set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuin...
Post a Comment
Read more