Asked about the ease of an IPO now. Drury’s replied, "It’s business as usual here at Xero. It's hard building a leadership team from offshore but we expect to have an A-grade team in place shortly. We’re continuing to double down on the US market and are already the leader in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.” I wonder. Having a stock price down 50 percent and going into an IPO with either no North American CEO or a new one is a weak platform for the dogs and ponies on the road show. In the Herald article, Drury said the U.S. market would be bigger, but take longer than expected. I think Xero underestimated Intuit CEO Brad Smith who said Intuit was “going to have to go hillbilly” on Xero. I'm from the same neck of the woods as Smith. That "Ah shucks" grinning, country-boy drawl is a finely tuned weapon that has been used to skin city slickers for a long time where we come from.
XERO’S WATERS A BIT ROUGHER Featured
The departure of Peter Karpas, CEO of Xero North America, last month is a sign that things are less smooth for the Australian cloud software provider. In a “New Zealand Herald” article, Xero CEO Rod Drury was quoted saying it was probably too soon for Karpas’ strategic view. The article notes the stock price is half of March’s highs and says this: “However some analysts have questioned whether the company has just shown its competitor what it needs to do to keep market share.” Does that fit with Xero's plan for a U.S. IPO before the March 31 fiscal year end?
