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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.

How e-bikes are changing cities

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.

The future of urban mobility after the pandemic

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.

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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October 31, 2025

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Apple silences its critics with strong iPhone demand and blowout services revenue

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

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October 31, 2025

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SpaceX and Blue Origin both submitted plans to get astronauts back to the moon faster, NASA says

SpaceX’s Starship rocket 38 launches during the 11th test flight on October 13, 2025 as seen from South Padre Island in Texas.

Gabriel V. Cardenas | Afp | Getty Images

SpaceX said it has pitched NASA a “simplified mission” to put astronauts back on the moon following criticisms over delays by Sean Duffy, the space agency’s acting administrator.

In a company blog post out Thursday, Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor said: “We’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.” 

Earlier this month, Duffy said in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, that SpaceX was behind schedule on building its lunar landing system for NASA’s Artemis III mission and that the agency would reopen the landing contract for that mission to competitors such as Jeff Bezos‘ rocket maker Blue Origin.

A NASA spokesperson in an email to CNBC said that the agency “has received and is evaluating plans from both SpaceX and Blue Origin for acceleration of HLS production.”

“Following the shutdown, the agency will issue an RFI to the broader aerospace industry for their proposals,” the spokesperson said. “A committee of NASA subject matter experts is being assembled to evaluate each proposal and determine the best path forward to win the second space race given the urgency of adversarial threats to peace and transparency on the Moon.”

NASA had previously said that SpaceX and Blue Origin would have until Oct. 29th to propose new ways to speed up the project.

Musk initially responded to Duffy by posting to his social network X, “Sean Dummy is trying to kill NASA!” In another post, Musk wrote: “The person responsible for America’s space program can’t have a 2 digit IQ.”

SpaceX’s massive Starship has flown 11 test flights so far, uncrewed. The last two flights were deemed successful, but the company has not yet shown all the in-orbit refueling capabilities it requires before embarking on the Artemis III, manned lunar mission.

Blue Origin has been developing a lunar lander for NASA and has received about $835 million from the space agency since their contract began in 2023. The company plans to launch a smaller scale version of their lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1.

Meanwhile, China is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade.

In September, in an all-hands meetings with NASA employees, Duffy told his staff that he was irked by “shade thrown” on the space agency at a Senate hearing in which some attendees doubted that the U.S. could put astronauts back on the Moon before China could land its astronauts there.

Besides its lunar mission, China also announced it is sending a new crew to its orbiting lab, the Tiangong space station, this week. China built this space station after it was excluded from access to the International Space Station due to U.S. national security concerns.

SpaceX is paid when it achieves different milestones under its NASA contract for the HLS (human landing system integrated lander).

According to USA Spending, which tracks federal contracts, NASA has already paid approximately $2.7 billion to SpaceX for the “design, development, manufacture, test, launch, demonstration and engineering support” of the HLS. The agency is obligated to pay around another $300 million for milestones SpaceX achieved, and Musk’s company stands to earn a total of $4.5 billion (or another $1.5 billion) from the HLS contract if they achieve all milestones.

SpaceX today said, in their company blog post, that they “self-funded” 90% or more of the program, which would imply they have spent over $30 billion already.

As CNBC previously reported, some NASA employees have been required to work without pay for the space agency during the federal government shutdown if their jobs support Artemis missions.

SpaceX and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

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Apple isn’t playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

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October 30, 2025

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Apple isn't playing the same AI capex game as the rest of the megacaps

While many of the largest tech companies race to build massive data centers for their artificial intelligence ambitions, Apple is taking a more modest approach.

Instead of simply buying as many AI chips as possible, Apple buys computing capacity from outside partners, finance chief Kevan Parekh explained Thursday on the company’s fourth quarter earnings call.

When Apple does build servers for its AI software, the company is using its own chips — not those from Nvidia or AMD — to power a service it calls Private Cloud Compute.

“I don’t see us moving away from this hybrid model, where we leverage both first-party capacity as well as leverage third-party capacity,” Parekh said.

Apple’s results on Thursday closed out a busy week of earnings for the tech industry. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta reported on Wednesday, while Amazon reported on Thursday.

All of the companies said they planned to boost spending on capital expenditures to secure the computing capacity needed to develop next-generation AI and serve users.

Alphabet said it expects to spend about $92 billion on capital expenditures this year. Microsoft said it spent about $34.9 billion on capex during the September quarter and will spend more in capex for its fiscal 2026 than it did the year prior.

Meta stock got whacked after CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company’s plan to spend about $71 billion on AI chips and other expenses in 2025. On Thursday, Amazon raised its 2025 spending forecast 6% to $125 billion.

Compared to them, Apple’s barely spending at all.

In its fiscal 2025, which ended in September, Apple spent $12.72 billion on capital expenditures.

And yet, that’s up 35% from what it spent last year, a significant increase. Parekh said Apple is expecting further increases. Analysts expect Apple’s capex to increase to $14.3 billion this year, according to FactSet.

“In ’25 we did have capex costs associated with building out our Private Cloud Compute environment in our first party data centers,” Parekh said. Earlier this month, Apple announced that it was starting to ship those servers from a factory in Houston.

Last year, the company released Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI tools that runs on the company’s chips that can summarize notifications, generate images like new emojis, and pass complicated queries to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Apple Intelligence has received mixed reviews from critics, and one of its centerpieces, an improved Siri assistant, was delayed by the company in May until 2026. The improved Siri is on track to come out next year, Apple said Thursday.

But if Apple’s decision to take a different approach to AI puts the company’s hardware sales at risk, it hasn’t happened yet.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC’s Steve Kovach that the consumer response to the company’s iPhone 17 models was “off the chart,” and the company said that overall sales would rise between 10% and 12% in the company’s December quarter. Apple executives were effusive on a call with analysts about the new iPhone’s popularity.

Still, Apple executives are aware that that AI features like Apple Intelligence are a factor in smartphone purchasing decisions.

“We’re very bullish on it becoming a greater factor,” Cook said.

Apple’s “hybrid” approach means that some of what the company spends on compute for AI ends up as an operating expense, instead of a capital expense. Analysts pressed Apple executives that the company’s operating expenses rose 11% in the past year to $15.91 billion.

“We are increasing our investments in AI, while also continuing to invest in our product roadmap,” Parekh said. “The vast majority of the increase to our operating expenses are driven by R&D.”

WATCH: Apple will outperform Amazon from tomorrow to end of year, says Deepwater’s Gene Munster

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