Bird Micromobility floats

Micro Mobility scooter rental company Bird is the first of it's category to float. Raising money on the NYSE, Bird. co plans to use most of the cash raised from merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to expand to new cities and grow its business in existing markets, the company's top executive said.

Merging with Switchback II Corp will start to trade on Thursday or Friday under the ticker symbol "BRDS".

Valuing the Micro Mobility Start up at $2.3 billion.

Raising a total of $414 million and Chief Executive Travis VanderZanden says that two thirds of that money will go to expanding existing operations and another 20% should go to launching operations in new cities. Expect to see a lot more Bird in the UK.

Telling Reuters, VanderZanden says:

"We plan to continue scaling out to all sizes of cities in the U.S. and Europe in particular," VanderZanden said. "I don't think our trend of expanding to new cities is going to slow down."

In August 2021, Bird said it was operating in 300 cities worldwide.

VanderZanden says now it is operating close to 350 cities globally.

While he goes on to say business rebounds following pandemic lockdowns - rides were up 43% in the second quarter versus pre-pandemic levels in 2019 - the company is confident in its 2022 revenue forecast of $400 million.