Shares of finance software company Intuit fell Thursday after the company said that CEO Brad Smith will step down as CEO at the end of the year. He will stay on as the company's executive board chairman.
Smith's replacement is Sasan Goodarzi, who has been executive vice president and general manager of the company's Small Business and Self-Employed Group for the past two years, according to a statement.
The company's chief technology officer, Tayloe Stansbury, is also stepping down. Marianna Tessel, currently senior vice president and chief product development officer on the company's Small Business and Self-Employed Group, will take Stansbury's place.
The company said that under Smith's 11-year tenure, Intuit's customer count doubled to 50 million and that earnings tripled while revenue doubled. Smith, 54, joined Intuit from ADP in 2003, and he took the chairman position in 2016. In the 2017 fiscal year Smith was given $17.1 million in compensation, which was down 14 percent year over year given the exceptional performance in the prior year, according to a filing. Smith serves on the board of SurveyMonkey.
Goodarzi, 50, has done two stints at Intuit. He joined for the first time in 2004 and worked as senior vice president and general manager of Intuit's ProTax and financial services groups. He left in late 2010 to be CEO of Nexant but returned less than a year later to be the company's chief information officer. Later on he held leadership positions in Intuit's Consumer Tax Group. Goodarzi joined Atlassian's board earlier this year.
Intuit's compensation committee said in the filing that in the 2017 fiscal year under Goodarzi's leadership, Intuit's Small Business Online Ecosystem revenue rose 30 percent, while the number of QuickBooks Online subscribers rose 58 percent to more than 2.3 million. In determining that he should receive more than $9.3 million in total compensation, excluding all other compensation, the committee also took into consideration "his abilities to inspire and implement change and to develop top talent."
Also on Thursday, Intuit announced results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full 2018 fiscal year. The company beat expectations for the fiscal fourth quarter, with 32 cents in earnings per share, excluding certain items, on $988 million in revenue. Analysts had been expecting 23 cents in earnings per share, excluding certain items, on $952 million in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters.
Intuit CEO Brad Smith will discuss the move in a CNBC interview at 11 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, Aug. 24.
