More Lime bikes are coming to a sidewalk near you.
CEO Wayne Ting told Bloomberg on Sunday that his scooter and bike rental company will be spending $55 million to expand its global bike fleet by 30,000 units. The company also celebrated some big financial milestones as it gears up to go public: It had a record $616 million in bookings revenue last year with $90 million in profit, it said.
“Last year marked a watershed moment for Lime and the shared electric vehicle industry,” said Ting in a statement provided to Quartz. “We achieved significant growth in our gross bookings and Adjusted EBITDA. This is a strong affirmation that our team is building a resilient business capable of achieving our long-term mission.”
Lime said its 30,000 new bikes will be e-bikes, and they represent a 15% or so expansion to the company’s current fleet of 200,000 bikes and scooters. The news comes in contrast to the fate of former rival Bird, which went public in 2021 only to file for bankruptcy in December 2023 and just announced that it had emerged from Chapter 11 as a private company.
Both companies were high-profile names in the so-called “micromobility” craze, in which app users could pick up and drop off bikes and scooters wherever they wanted for short trips. Lime, which raised more than $500 million in 2021 to help grow its operations before its own stock market debut, thinks now the time is right for an IPO and that Bird suffered from poor timing and other business shortcomings.
“I think historically people always believe there’s demand for micromobility, but this is an industry that is littered with dead bodies of people who just can’t make this business work,” Ting said in an interview with The Verge last year.