The company has been operating station-based rental bike systems in around 300 cities and 28 countries since 2004.
(Photo: imago / ZUMA Press)
Hamburg The most traditional provider of sharing mobility in Germany is losing its independence: The Leipzig company Nextbike is bought by the Berlin e-scooter provider Tier Mobility. Tier and the previous majority owner of Nextbike, Co-Investor Partners, announced this on Monday. On the one hand, Tier gets many thousands of bicycles in 300 cities in 28 countries. On the other hand, Tier also becomes a close partner to several municipalities.
Unlike the generation of e-scooter providers that emerged over the past four years, Nextbike, founded in 2004, usually acts as an official partner of cities or transport associations. For example, the provider operates the Metropolrad Ruhr in the Ruhr area or Potsdam Rad in the Brandenburg state capital.
Nextbike also operates partnerships abroad – for example in Warsaw. This enables the provider to offer fixed stations in many cities and to have trips subsidized. One of the main competitors in the model is the Deutsche Bahn brand Call a Bike.
The takeover of Nextbike is a unique opportunity, said Tier founder and co-boss Lawrence Leuschner. Tier had recently raised $ 200 million from financiers and skyrocketed its valuation to $ 2 billion. Tier had announced that the Berlin company would use the fresh money to push ahead with its expansion and make acquisitions.
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The Berliners now have an advantage over their direct competitors. After all, the industry is increasingly subject to regulation in cities. In Hamburg, for example, providers now have to ensure that users take photos of the parked scooters. A specially established control patrol is intended to prevent too many scooters from parked in the wild.
The provider is valued by investors at two billion euros.
(Photo: Reuters)
As a partner of cities, Tier could now build closer relationships – and possibly offer users of the subsidized bicycle systems combined offers with the freely financed e-scooters.
The two partners did not mention the purchase price for the takeover. The latest balance sheet figures in the Federal Gazette are from 2019, the year before the corona pandemic. At that time, Nextbike had a turnover of 29 million euros and a loss of almost 1.5 million euros.
Despite the pandemic, Nextbike has recently grown, said Co-Investor Partners. In the past 18 months, 60 projects in 17 countries had been supplied with new bicycles. Nextbike won a tender in Vienna and started anew in Italy and Montenegro. In Cologne, the provider is renewing the fleet of bicycles on behalf of the KVB transport association.
The investor Co-Invest spends 15 to 30 million euros per investment. He was also involved in the IPO of the optician Mister Spex.
At Nextbike there could also be some refresher work waiting for animals: in some cities the bikes are visibly showing their age. In addition, Nextbike was launched in the time before the advent of apps – until a few years ago it was rented solely by phone. Therefore, the technology is not always as convenient as with the younger providers, who were able to rely on apps alone.
With agency material
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