Snap, the struggling maker of the disappearing app Snapchat, saw its stock take a big hit after announcing its chief financial officer Tim Stone, who came on board in May, is resigning.
According to a report in The Financial Times citing a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Snap said Stone is leaving the company to “pursue other opportunities.” In after-hours trading Tuesday (January 15) the stock lost 8 percent as investors digested the news, according to the report.
The departure of Stone adds to the list of senior executives who have left the social media company since its initial public offering nearly two years ago. The paper pointed to Imran Khan, its chief strategy officer, who left last September and Nick Bell, the vice president of content, who followed suit two months later. At the same time that executives are leaving, the company has to contend with a decline in daily users and a lawsuit over its IPO. In November Snap revealed that regulators in the U.S. were looking into complaints by investors that they were misled about the impact Instagram would have on Snap’s business ahead of its IPO. Snap, noted The Financial Times, has called lawsuits over that “meritless.”
The Financial Times reported Snap said Stone had “confirmed” he is not leaving over any disagreement with Snap and that he will stay in his role, for now, to help the company find a replacement and transition his job functions. Prior to coming on at Snap, Stone was vice president of finance at Amazon. Snap paid him $500,000 plus stock which is valued at $20 million and vests over four years. Snap also said in the filing that it expects fourth-quarter results to be “slightly favourable to the top end” of its previous guidance. The company has projected revenue of $335 million to $380 million for the fourth quarter and a loss of $75 million to $100 million, noted the report.
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