Shares of flash-storage company Tintri soared in after-hours trading as investors apparently welcomed the news that Ken Klein wll step down as chief executive.
Tintri went public in June, but its stock has dropped as much as 59% from the offering price. In the third quarter, it had a GAAP loss of $37.9 million, more than it generated in revenue.
On Monday, the company announced that Klein, who has served as both chairman and chief executive since October 2013, would relinquish the CEO position when a successor is found. His dual role had been criticized, with The Register commenting that “Tintri is an object lesson in why the CEO should not be the chairman, and Tintri’s board fouled up when it approved that situation.”
The stock was up only 1.8% in regular trading Monday but jumped 15.4% to $5.90 in the after-hours session as Tintri also reported a lower-than-expected net loss of 72 cents per share for the fourth quarter. Revenue fell 29% to $28.9 million but beat analysts’ estimates of $26.3 million.
“We made progress on our financial initiatives this quarter … reducing our operating expenses, and strengthening our balance sheet,” Klein said in a news release.”
“I am proud of the transformation the company has made and I believe the company is on the right trajectory,” he added. “I am ready to transition leadership to the right successor to propel the company forward.”
Tintri offers flash storage products for companies, but as Business Insider reports, “Storage vendors have not fared well over the past few years, as businesses increasingly store their data in cloud services like [Amazon’s] AWS S3.”
“The one-time giant in the market, EMC, was acquired by Dell,” Business Insider said. “Former startup darlings have had less-than-stellar IPOs, like Pure Storage, or they’ve been picked up in fire-sale acquisitions. And many other flash companies have also struggled.”
Tintri said Monday it had implemented a 20% staff cut and terminated a facility lease early to save more than $70 million in fiscal 2019 operating expenses.
