Electric vehicle company Bird Global filed for bankruptcy with an agreement to sell some of its assets to its existing lenders.
The Miami-based company is being kept afloat via a $25 million loan from Apollo Global Management’s commercial lending unit, MidCap Financial, and the company’s second-lien lenders.
Bird Global will continue to operate as usual and “has sufficient liquidity to meet financial obligations to city partners, vendors, suppliers, and employees during and after the restructuring process, and will operate as usual,” the company reported.
The filing does not affect Bird Canada or Bird Europe. They are separate organizations.
According to the filing in The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida, Bird Global aims to sell off its assets for the highest price via a “stalking horse” agreement as part of an auction in bankruptcy court. Its lenders will designate a baseline bid before opening the proceedings to other bidders over the next few months.
Michael Washinushi, Bird’s interim chief executive, will stay on as the company pursues a turnaround plan.
“This announcement represents a significant milestone in Bird’s transformation, which began with the appointment of new leadership early this year,” said Washinushi. “We are making progress toward profitability and aim to accelerate that progress by right-sizing our capital structure through this restructuring. We remain focused on our mission to make cities more livable by using micromobility to reduce car usage, traffic and carbon emissions.”
Bird Global had warned investors a year ago that unless it raised cash, it might not be able to “continue as a going concern.” The company was forced to delist from the New York Stock Exchange in September due to a valuation that was too low.
The company launched its products in multiple cities in 2017 and 2018. Bird’s e-scooters are “in over 350 cities, from Rome to San Francisco.” While initially promoted as a sustainable solution for urban mobility, Bird continued to lose money, and the pandemic forced the company to halt operations in multiple cities.
E-scooters have also increasingly faced complaints questioning their safety, with abandoned rental scooters cluttering sidewalks and parks nationwide.
Photo courtesy Bird
