The ‘Apple of e-bikes’ targets profitability next year even as rivals enter bankruptcy
The Cowboy Cruiser.
Cowboy
Cowboy, the Belgian electric bike maker, is expecting to hit full-year profitability in 2024 even as some of its market rivals are facing financial hardship.
Adrien Roose, Cowboy’s CEO and co-founder, told CNBC that he expects the company to reach profitability on an EBITDA basis by the end of the second quarter and then sustain this through the third quarter. EBITDA refers to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
By the third quarter, Cowboy would then have reached profitability on a full-year basis, according to the firm’s boss.
“There is some seasonality in this business,” Roose said in an interview. “Essentially, people like buying a lot of bikes in the summer, and not nearly as much in the winter.”
However, he added, “We have a high degree of confidence that, by 2024, we’ll be EBITDA profitable and cash flow positive on a full-year basis.”
EBITDA is a traditional measure of profitability for many technology companies.
Cowboy is a startup that designs electric bikes. It’s been termed the “Apple of e-bikes” in the past due to its integration of software smarts in its bikes.
Cowboy links its bikes with an app that allows users to lock them when they’re not in use, track their location, predict battery depletion and get weather updates.
Cowboy also serves as the designer of the bikes rather than the manufacturer — it gets other firms to handle the making of its bikes, similar to how Apple relies on contract manufacturers like Foxconn to make its iPhones.
Tough times for the e-bike industry
But e-bikes have had a rough time in the market lately.
A shift in supply chain dynamics has led to a situation where e-bike stock levels are now in abundance at many manufacturers but demand has fallen significantly from the pandemic boom.
That’s different to when e-bike firms were scrambling for more units in 2021 when consumers were itching for alternative, sustainable modes of transport and a way to get outside during the Covid lockdowns.
In that period, customers were often faced with huge delays to their orders as companies couldn’t keep up.
“By the time that this traffic jam started normalizing, the world was already shifting to get in quite a different place,” Roose said. “Towards 2022 and 2023, there was an overall slowdown in demand.”
“This created the perfect storm for companies which have massively over-ordered and now are facing demand that is slightly lower than hoped so or expected, and that translated immediately to very high inventory levels, a lack of cash, and a lack of liquidity.”
The e-bike industry has been plagued by recent bankruptcies of major players in the space. In July, Dutch e-bike firm VanMoof filed for protection from creditors. Administrators overseeing the bankruptcy process are exploring a number of options for VanMoof, including a potential asset sale to a third party so it can continue operations.
Revonte, a Finnish e-bike firm, also filed for bankruptcy and said it is selling its intellectual property.
Roose said that his firm is unlike competitors in that it doesn’t manufacture bikes itself and therefore has a slimmer cost line.
With some competing e-bike firms, “their cost base was way too high for their size,” Roose said, adding that VanMoof operated with far more employees than Cowboy despite boasting similar rates of revenue.
Long-term outlook
Cowboy launched its new Cruiser e-bike with an upright seating position — known as the “Dutch” riding position — earlier this year.
The bike is intended to provide riders with “improved posture and increased visibility on the road,” according to the firm.
But at an “introductory” price of $3,490, Cowboy’s e-bikes don’t come cheap. And on Aug. 1, the company raised prices of its belt-driven “Performance” configuration bikes to $3,790 from $3,490.
E-bike firms have had to get more aggressive on pricing as the tide of venture capital that buoyed the industry in 2020 and 2021 has seeped out of the market with interest rates climbing higher.
Still, though, Roose said he’s keeping his eye squarely focused on the long-term potential of e-bikes — driving sustainability with less cars on the street — rather than the short-term market outlook.
“The demand for e-bikes in general is really strong and it’s been growing year-on-year,” Roose said. “In 2023, there’s been a bit of a slowdown, but the mid to long-term demand for micro mobility in general is as strong as it’s ever been and we’re super bullish.”
Revenues have risen by 38% year-over-year for Cowboy’s best-selling models, while its operating costs have fallen 19% year-to-date.
Roose said the company has also increased its margin to 40% — no mean feat for a hardware company — and has reduced its losses by 83% this year.
The company secured 13 million euros ($14.1 million) in additional funding from its existing institutional backers and crowdfunding investors in April.
The e-bike market is expected to reach $119.7 billion by 2030 at a compound annual growth rate of 15.6% from 2023, fueled by rising prices of crude oil and a move toward economical and environmentally friendly modes of transport, according to Fortune Business Insights.
Technology
IPO market gets boost from Circle’s 500% surge, sparking optimism that drought may be ending
Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle Internet Group, the issuer of one of the world’s biggest stablecoins, and Circle Internet Group co-founder Sean Neville react as they ring the opening bell, on the day of the company’s IPO, in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.
NYSE
For over three years, venture capital firms have been waiting for this moment.
Tech IPOs came to a virtual standstill in early 2022 due to soaring inflation and rising interest rates, while big acquisitions were mostly off the table as increased regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe turned away potential buyers.
Though it’s too soon to say those days are entirely in the past, the first half of 2025 showed signs of momentum, with June in particular producing much-needed returns for Silicon Valley’s startup financiers. In all, there were five tech IPOs last month, accelerating from a monthly average of two since January, according to data from CB Insights.
Highlighting that group was crypto company Circle, which more than doubled in its New York Stock Exchange debut on June 5, and is now up sixfold from its IPO price for a market cap of $42 billion. The stock got a big boost in mid-June after the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, which would establish a federal framework for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Venture firms General Catalyst, Breyer Capital and Accel now own a combined $8 billion worth of Circle stock even after selling a fraction of their holdings in the offering. Silicon Valley stalwarts Greylock, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital are set to soon profit from Figma’s IPO, after the design software vendor filed its public prospectus on Tuesday. Since its $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped in late 2023, Figma has been one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs in startup land.
It’s “refreshing and something that we’ve been waiting for for a long time,” said Eric Hippeau, managing partner at early-stage venture firm Lerer Hippeau, regarding the exit environment. “I’m not sure that we are confident that this can be a sustained trend yet, but it’s been very encouraging.”
Another positive sign for the industry the past couple months was the performance of artificial infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in late March. The stock was relatively stagnant for its first month on the market but shot up 170% in May and another 47% in June.
For venture firms, long considered the lifeblood of risky tech startups, IPOs are essential in order to generate profits for the university endowments, foundations and pension funds that allocate a portion of their capital to the asset class. Without handsome returns, there’s little incentive for limited partners to put money into future funds.
After a record year in 2021, which saw 155 U.S. venture-backed IPOs raise $60.4 billion, according to data from University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, every year since has been relatively dismal. There were 13 such offerings in 2022, followed by 18 in 2023 and 30 last year, collectively raising $13.3 billion, Ritter’s data shows.
The slowdown followed the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign in 2022, meant to slow crippling inflation. As the lower-growth environment extended into years two and three, venture firms faced increasing pressure to return cash to investors.
‘Backlog of liquidity’
In its 2024 yearbook, the National Venture Capital Association said that even with a 34% increase in U.S. VC exit value last year to $98 billion, that number is 87% below the 2021 peak and less than half the average for the four years from 2017 through 2020. It’s a troubling dynamic for the 58,000 venture-backed companies that have raised a total of $947 billion from investors, according to the annual report, which is produced by the NVCA and PitchBook.
“This backlog of liquidity drought risks creating a ‘zombie company’ cohort — businesses generating operational cash flow but lacking credible exit prospects,” the report said.
Other than Circle, the latest crop of IPOs mostly consists of smaller and lesser-known brands. Health-tech companies Hinge Health and Omada Health are valued at about $3.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively. Etoro, an online trading platform, has a market cap of just over $5 billion. Online banking provider Chime Financial has a higher profile due largely to a years-long marketing blitz and is valued at close to $11.5 billion.
Meanwhile, the highest valued private companies like SpaceX, Stripe and Databricks remain on the sidelines, and AI highfliers OpenAI and Anthropic continue to raise massive amounts of cash with no intention of going public anytime soon.
Still, venture capitalists told CNBC that there are plenty of companies with the financial metrics to be public, and that more of them are readying for the process.
“The IPO market is starting to open and the VC world is cautiously optimistic,” said Rick Heitzmann, a partner at venture firm FirstMark in New York. “We are preparing companies for the next wave of public offerings.”
There are other ways to make money in the meantime. Secondary sales, a process that involves selling private shares to new investors, are on the rise, allowing early employees and investors to get some liquidity.
And then there’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing, as he tries to position his company at the center of AI innovation and development.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Last month, Meta announced a $14 billion bet on Scale AI, taking a 49% stake in the AI startup in exchange for poaching founder Alexandr Wang and a small group of his top engineers. The deal effectively bought out half of the stock owned by investors, leaving them with the opportunity to make money on the rest of their holdings, should a future acquisition or IPO take place.
The deal is a big win for Accel, which led Scale AI’s Series A round in 2017, and is poised to earn more than $2.5 billion in the transaction. Index Ventures led the Series B in 2018, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the Series C the following year at a valuation of over $1 billion.
Investors now hope the Federal Reserve will move toward a rate-cutting campaign, though the central bank hasn’t committed to one. There’s also ongoing optimism that regulators will make going public less burdensome. Last week, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that U.S. stock exchanges and the SEC have discussed loosening regulations to make IPOs more enticing.
Mike Bellin, who heads consulting firm PwC’s U.S. IPO practice, said he anticipates a diversity of IPOs across sectors in the second half of the year. According to data from PwC, pharma and fintech were among the most active sectors for deals through the end of May.
While the recent trend in IPO activity is an encouraging sign for investors, potential roadblocks remain.
Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty delayed IPO plans from companies including Klarna and StubHub in April. Neither has provided an update on when they plan to debut.
FirstMark’s Heitzmann said the path forward is “not at all clear,” adding that he wants to see a strong quarter of economic stability and growth before confidently saying that the market is wide open.
Additionally, other than CoreWeave and Circle, recent tech IPOs haven’t had big pops. Hinge Health, Chime and eToro have seen relatively modest gains from their offer price, while Omada Health is down.
But virtually any activity beats what VCs were experiencing the last few years. Overall, Hippeau said recent IPO trends are generally encouraging.
“There’s starting to be kind of light at the end of the tunnel,” Hippeau said.
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