Travis VanderZanden, the CEO and co-founder of mobility company Bird, has offloaded his role as President after layoffs, profitability issues and a non-compliance warning from the New York Stock Exchange.
Effective immediately, Bird’s board of directors has elevated the company’s COO, Shane Torchiana, to take over the role of President and oversee the electric scooter manufacturer’s day-to-day operations.
Torchiana first joined the Santa Monica-based company in January 2019 as its SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy before he was promoted to COO this past January. Prior to Bird, Torchiana spent eight years at Boston Consulting Group and worked in global macro investing at Eaton Vance, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley.
Torchiana steps up as Bird, which went public via a SPAC merger in November 2021, looks to recover from a rocky past six months. In Bird’s Q1 2022 financial report, the company revealed its third consecutive quarter of declining revenue, bringing in just $38 million, down from $54 million in the last quarter of 2021 and $65 million in Q3 2021. Bird also stated it would slow the expansion of its vehicle portfolio and reevaluate the markets it operates in. The company has since laid off almost a quarter of its workforce, according to Layoffs.fyi.
This poor performance has caused Bird’s stock price to tumble from more than $6 to less than a dollar—shares of the company traded for $0.41 when the markets opened on Tuesday morning. Bird’s low stock price has triggered a warning from the NYSE that the company will be delisted if it can’t average a stock price of more than a dollar in a consecutive 30-day trading period over the next six months.
Torchiana’s financial background and knowledge of the inner workings of the urban mobility company make him a well-prepared choice to position Bird for recovery as it enters summer, traditionally its busiest time of year.
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