There’s a piece of this Allbirds story that most people are completely missing, and it changes how you should read this move.
Allbirds has an ATM in place, allowing it to issue up to $50 million in fresh stock at the prevailing market price.
Before this announcement there was basically no bid in the stock so using that facility would've been impossible.
What a difference a day makes:
At today's intra-day high of ~$20/share, they would only need to issue 2.5 million shares to fully tap that facility.
And that's basically a rounding error on daily volume as over 250 million shares have traded today - compared to avg. volume of only 116,000 shares a day.
Conveniently, the ATM size ($50 mil) is the exact same amount of the credit facility they announced with the pivot.
See the play?
Announce a flashy AI pivot, you stock rips, and liquidity shows up.
Then, hit the bid with treasury stock via the ATM, raise a bunch of equity, wipe out a bunch of debt, and start fresh as an AI company.
As the kids would say 'it's giving DAT Summer vibes'