The folks over at Bird Global announced numbers last night. Q4 was supposedly a bit better than planned, while Q1 is going to be a lot worse. A few thoughts.
The number of rides increased year over year to 9.4M from 4.6M, which is good, but it doesn’t sit too far above the 2019 total of 7.9M even though they deployed 79M scooters in 2021 vs. only 41.4M in 2019. Almost twice as many scooters for not quite 20% more rides.
That translated into a 1.3x average rides per deployed vehicle vs. 2.1x in 2019.
In a sign that inflation appears to have hit the scooter sharing business, revenues were up about 54% vs. 2019. So, 20% more rides but 54% more revenues. Looks like they’re going after the UBER model. How far can they push that?
$82.3M in stock comp expense during the quarter. They did just come public, but that is quite the kiss. The 10K shows an increase in RSU’s from 0 to 53.2M, though apparently they are all pretty deeply underwater at the moment. The tech startups have a habit of repricing these things, since god forbid they should ever be forced to perform, so we’ll keep an eye out for that.
Adjusted EBITDA was -$21.5M, vs. -$5.3M in Q3, or about $16.2M lower for a $20M GTV decline.
Product sales drove the top line beat: $9M vs. $3.2M in 2020, though overall 2021 product sales were only 22% higher than 2020.
Inventories spike from $5M to $28M year over year.
Negative cash flow from operations for 2021 was $133M, a bit more than the $128M in cash they had on their balance sheet at year end.
Guidance of $35M for Q1 revenues is well short of the $50M folks were expecting, while $350M for the year is especially back-end-loaded. Their Q1 is typically a weak seasonal quarter due to poor weather, but out here in SoCal there hasn’t been any rain in months, and this is their biggest market…. Until New York City comes along.
If $7 gas doesn’t spur more people to adopt a scooter sharing program and ditch their cars for those short trips, I’m not sure what else will. With perhaps a year or so of cash left on their balance sheet and their stock hovering at all-time lows, they had better figure out how to reduce their cash burn or they will wind up on the scrap pile of other money-burning SPACs who thought that the music would never stop.