Megaport CEO Vincent English steps down

Vincent English has tendered his resignation as CEO of Brisbane-based cloud technology company Megaport (ASX: MP1), following six years in the role in which he helped guide the company to a tenfold increase in revenue.

With global and Australian customers ranging from American Airlines to FedEx to Ramsay Health Care (ASX: RHC), Megaport's Network as a Service (NaaS) platform simplifies the process of connecting to cloud services.

The outgoing CEO's resignation is effective today, but he will remain available to advise and assist Megaport with the transition until 30 April.

"Vincent has provided outstanding leadership as CEO of Megaport for the past six years, leading the business through its scale up and scale out transformation," says Megaport's chairman and founder, Bevan Slattery.

"Vincent has been responsible for driving the vision of the Company through a period of incredible growth and for creating a legacy which sets the company up for accelerated revenue growth and operational success in the future."

Slattery has been appointed interim chief executive officer while a global executive search is underway, and will also remain in the chairmanship position.

Investors responded negatively to today's news as shares dropped 10.1 per cent to $5.16.

Megaport has two new executives over the past 12 months, with IT industry veteran Jim Brinksma - who had formerly held technology roles at Ciena BluePlanet and Goldman Sachs - becoming chief technology officer in March 2022, followed by the appointment of former Contrast Security exec Jeff Tworek stepping in as chief revenue officer role in November.

Last week there was also a reshuffling of the company secretary position at the group as Emily McCaffery stepped down and was replaced by Celia Pheasant, who had previously been in the same job from 2014 to September, 2022.

English was CFO of Megaport for 18 months prior to taking the top job, and in the financial year when he assumed the role the company tripled its revenue to $10.7 million. Fast forward to FY22 and that figure had reached $109 million, and as at 30 December 2022 the group was sitting on annualised revenue of $148 million.

By the end of the half the company had 2,739 customers on its books, whose usage of services on average had gone up slightly on the prior year. More than half of Megaport's revenue comes from North America and that share has increased over the past year, with other key markets including Asia Pacific (29 per cent) and Europe (15 per cent).

Megaport had $57.5 million in cash at the end of calendar 2022.