Sage CEO Stephen Kelly has suddenly left his position and is no longer a director of the company, “after coming to an agreement with the board”, the company said.
The company has ramped up its partner programme in recent times and a rapidly increasing amount of its business is through the cloud with service providers.
Sage said Kelly “will remain available” to the group until he “leaves” on 31 May 2019. His current position in the company has not been outlined in that long run-up, and Kelly has not explained what he will be doing in the future. The board says it has initiated the process to find a new CEO.
While that search goes on, Steve Hare, chief financial officer, has been appointed to the additional post of chief operating officer on an interim basis. In his position as CFO and COO, Hare will have “full executive authority to run the business” until the appointment of a new CEO, said the firm.
Sage said: “The group remains focused on completing its evolution to a SaaS business, driven by Sage Business Cloud and providing outstanding customer experience, with greater prioritisation on accelerating the operational execution required to realise the significant opportunity available.”
Whether or not the board thought Kelly was fully up to the job in the rapidly changing cloud market, or whether Kelly just wanted to do something different, is anybody's guess. But the company added: “In seeking a new CEO, the board is particularly focused on finding an executive practiced in embedding sustainable processes at scale for the next phase of the Sage journey to capture the significant opportunities ahead.”
Kelly is in no doubt he has succeeded so far. He said: “I joined Sage four years ago and am immensely proud of the extraordinary change that I have had the privilege to lead. I joined a fragmented organisation with minimal presence in the cloud.
“The major cultural transformation has created Sage Business Cloud which has now grown to £386m of annualised recurring revenue (ARR) from a standing start, and has driven total shareholder return for Sage of over twice that of the FTSE100 during my tenure.”
Sage added: “The Group continues to trade in line with previous full year FY18 guidance of around 7% organic revenue growth and around 27.5% organic operating margin.” The company will announce its FY18 results on 21 November 2018.