Intuit CEO To Relinquish Role By The End Of The Year

Intuit announced Thursday (August 24) that Brad Smith, the company’s chief executive, will relinquish his role as CEO later in 2018.

The Wall Street Journal, citing the maker of TurboTax and QuickBooks, reported Sasan Goodarzi, the current general manager of Intuit’s small business and self-employed group, will become CEO on January 1. Smith, who is currently the chairman of Intuit, will become executive chairman. Goodarzi will also become a board member, noted the report. Goodarzi has been with the company since 2004, noted the Wall Street Journal. The paper noted that a lot of the growth Intuit has seen recently is from the business units overseen by Goodarzi, including QuickBooks.  The company also announced that Tayloe Stansbury, the company’s chief technology officer, will step down on Jan.1. He will be succeeded by Marianna Tessel, chief product development officer for the company’s small business and self-employed group.

“Having led each of our largest businesses and served as our chief information officer during his 13 years with the company, Sasan is a proven leader and growth driver,” said Intuit’s Smith said in a press release announcing  the management changes. “He has been instrumental to the transformation of our company and was a key architect of our One Intuit Ecosystem strategy. Sasan is both ready and primed to lead Intuit into the future. I look forward to working with him in his new role.”

The shakeup at the company comes as Intuit reported a 17 percent increase in quarterly revenue to $988 million. The company’s small business unit saw a 20 percent increase in revenue, while the QuickBooks Online subscriber base increased 38 percent to 2.6 million and the non-U.S. subscriber base jumped 62 percent to 800,000. Profit of $49 million or $0.18 a share was about double what it earned in the fiscal fourth quarter a year ago.  Excluding items, Intuit had EPS of $0.32, which was higher than the $0.23 a share Wall Street was looking for.  Looking out to its first quarter, Intuit forecasted EPS of $0.09 to $0.11 a share and revenue between $955 million to $975 million. For fiscal 2019 it expects adjusted earnings of $6.40 a share to $6.50 a share with revenue between $6.5 billion and $6.6 billion, reported the Wall Street Journal.