Bird Global, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the BIRD Global Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Taylor Giles, Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone. With me today are Michael Wasinushi, Byrd's interim CEO and CFO, and Stuart Lyons, Byrd's president. Before we begin, let me remind you that all statements made on this call that do not relate to matters of historical fact are considered forward-looking statements under the U.S. federal securities laws, including statements regarding our current expectations for the business and our financial performance. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the historical experience or present expectations. The description of these risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements on this call can be found in the risk factors section of our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2022 and in our other filings with the SEC. On this call, management will also reference non-GAAP measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted operating performance, ride profit before vehicle depreciation, and free cash flow, which we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in our earnings release on the company's investor relations page at ir.bird.com. The growth percentages that follow are in comparison to the same period in the prior year, except as otherwise specified. I will now turn the call over to Michael.

Thank you, Taylor. And thank you all for joining today's call. I'll start by quickly addressing my new interim CEO role. I joined Byrd in January of this year as CFO because I saw the enormous opportunity to change the landscape of transportation in a market with hundreds of billions of dollars of TAM. Today, as I step into the interim CEO role, I am more convinced than ever that the Byrd platform is the best solution to support the evolving transit and climate initiatives of all cities. And I'm well aware of the unit economics and potential for profit in this industry. I'm excited to partner with Stuart and our leadership team as we strategically grow the company and mature Byrd's operations. In my extended role, I will focus on executing against our mandates of acting as a trusted partner to the cities in which we operate, managing expenses to support the operations of the business, and asset efficiency, which includes leveraging our two most important assets, the Byrd team and our vehicles. Of course, these mandates are all driven by our mission to provide clean, equitable transportation alternatives for the consumers, communities, and cities we serve, as well as making a profit where we operate. Going forward, Stuart and I are keenly focused on our riders and the value our vehicles provide. The engineering and field teams are engaged to ensure we have our vehicles at the right place at the right time and with the right functionality. We are a tech enabled company, but our success will also come from ensuring that our field partners and riders have a seamless experience with Bird. Over the last six months, we've made many strategic changes to improve how we operate, and we will continue to refine our approach. I am confident that we will continue to show progress across all metrics as we bring a renewed focus on operational excellence within the markets in which we operate. Let me now turn to our second quarter performance. Highlights from the quarter include adjusted EBITDA improvement of 96% year over year, OPEX reduction of almost 90%, ride profit margin before vehicle depreciation improvement of 10%, and gross margin improvement of 75%. Revenue, as expected, is down 28% year over year, primarily due to exiting a number of unprofitable and regulatory challenge markets in 2022. We are tracking with our internal plan, but we are taking this pivot in management to reassess our financial plan and as such, we'll be temporarily suspending guidance. Turning now to our first mandate of being a trusted partner to the cities we serve, during the quarter, we were pleased to announce a number of new markets, expansion in existing markets, and renewals in markets worldwide. We also benefited from both organic and paid consumer activations, which resulted in significant spikes in riderships across certain markets, demonstrating how BIRD's model can scale. I will let Stuart walk you through this.