Electric scooter and moped hire startup Bird Rides Inc. is planning to go public via a special-purpose acquisition company, according to a report late Sunday from dot.LA.

The deal, which has not been confirmed by the company, reportedly involves Bird merging with Switchback II Corp. That’s a Cayman Islands-registered SPAC that debuted on the New York Stock Exchange March 1 and has a market cap of $393.7 million as of the close of regular trading Monday.

Dot.LA says that it has seen documents detailing that Switchback has been marketing a $200 million private investment in public equity offering in recent weeks that allows investors to buy shares of Bird at the initial public offering price. Under the deal, Bird will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in cash through the deal that it can use to fund its operations as, in the words of dot.LA, “it struggles to achieve profitability and to expand into more markets.”

The transaction is said to value Bird at $2.3 billion, below a valuation of $2.85 billion at the beginning of last year. That figure refers to the valuation of Bird when it last raised venture capital funding of $75 million in January 2020.  The funding was an extension of a $275 million Series D round in October 2019.

Bird was long seen as a highflier in the electric scooter and moped startup sector and was even approached by Uber Technologies Inc. in November 2018 to discuss a possible acquisition. Uber ended up investing in LimeBike Inc. instead, while Bird went on to acquire another startup, Scoot Networks Inc., in 2019.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. With shutdowns, restrictions and other pandemic-related responses not only in the U.S. but in Europe as well, Bird was hit hard with ridership rapidly dropping. Quoting the pitch deck on the SPAC deal, dot.LA said the company is quickly burning through the cash it has raised since 2017, losing $226 million in 2018 and $183 million more in 2020.

Looking ahead, Bird is expecting losses in 2021 to come in at $96 million, followed by $28 million in 2022, before reaching profitability in 2023.

According to data from Crunchbase, Bird has previously raised $623 million. Investors include CDPQ, Sequoia Capital, Greycroft, Simon Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Hinge Capital, Upfront Ventures, Sound Ventures, CRV, Accel and Tusk Ventures.

Photo: Bird