Swedish shared micromobility giant Voi had its first profitable year in 2024, according to preliminary unaudited results the company shared exclusively with TechCrunch.
Voi, which offers shared e-scooters and e-bikes across more than 100 markets in Europe, recorded €132.8 million ($138 million) in net revenue in 2024. On an adjusted basis, Voi earned €17.2 million ($17.9 million) in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization profit, and around €100,000 ($104,000) in adjusted earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).
While €100,000 profit (on an adjusted basis) doesn’t seem like much to go on, Voi’s founder and CEO Frederik Hjelm told TechCrunch that the company’s modest results demonstrate Voi’s ability to improve its bottom line by 100 percentage points since 2021 is in a “tough industry with lots of ups and downs.”
Lime, another industry leader, reported full-year profitability in 2023.
“Now we’re starting to show real cash positive financials and EBIT profitability, so we’re getting to a place where we’d be a good candidate for the public markets in, say, two to three years from now,” Hjelm said.
Hjelm also noted that a business that revolves around physical assets should highlight EBIT profitability over EBITDA because it’s a metric that better captures the operational cost structure.
Voi didn’t share other financial information like net income and operating expenses. Hjelm said the company would release that information with a more detailed audited report at the end of February.
Hjelm did note that Voi’s vehicle profit margins – which grew to 57%, up from 49% in 2023 – can be considered a “proxy” for the company’s gross margin.
The CEO attributes Voi’s improved bottom line to a series of cost-cutting measures and efficiency improvements such as automation on the product side, and using machine learning models to power predictive maintenance or determine battery swapping schedules. He claimed this has also helped Voi improve the lifespan of its current fleet to around eight years, which has been a “big driver of profitability improvements.”
“A thousand small things that distill down to one thing, which is really a focus on discipline and obsession with small details,” Hjelm said.
Vehicle utilization is also healthy, he said, with each vehicle averaging out at up to 10 rides per day during peak months and two rides per day at off-peak.
“The first years [of shared micromobility] were quite chaotic when it came to how many players were in the market, location accuracy on the vehicles, parking clutter, and so on,” Hjelm said. “Over the last three years, we have seen cities maturing and taking what they consider to be the most suitable players to run micromobility schemes in their cities. And that has improved both public acceptance but also profitability on the bottom line for us.”
Voi ended 2024 with €60 million ($62 million) in cash and cash equivalents. In October 2024, Voi secured €125 million in senior secured bonds ($130M) that are mainly backed by Nordic and American institutional investors — a step change for the startup that had until then raised $675.56 million in equity from VCs, according to PitchBook data.
“Me and my CFO said at the end of 2021 that we don’t want to be dependent on equity investors anymore, so let’s turn this company profitable,” Hjelm said.
Voi completed its first drawdown of €50 million ($52 million) from the bond issuance, money that will go towards helping Voi expand its fleet and launch in new markets across Europe. Today, Voi counts about 100,000 vehicles in its fleet – 90% of which are scooters.
“This year, we’re increasing our bike fleet significantly over the next couple of months,” Hjelm said.
“Raising a public bond is proof of trust from the very sophisticated public debt bond investors,” he added.
When asked if Voi plans to use any of its cash to acquire other companies – there have been rumors that Voi is acquiring Bolt’s micromobility business – Hjelm said that there is no confirmed acquisition offer.
“But I would buy it at the right price,” he said. “Bolt is great, but we do micromobility better!”
