CFO Profile: James Bodha, Myriad
Myriad’s CFO Bodha Steps in as Co-CEO
Myriad
James Bodha, CFO of Myriad, is taking over for CEO Simon Wilkinson.
In April this year, Swiss IT company Myriad took over UK-based rival Synchronica. The deal was a major pet project of Myriad’s CEO Simon Wilkinson, who wanted to turn the company into one of the largest messaging software and services providers in the world. However, the £24 million deal was probably too big for Myriad.
In its half-year results for 2012, Myriad reports revenues of $25 million, down from $35 million for the same period in 2011. The biggest part of this sharp drop was due to falling device licensing revenues, which declined from more than $21 million to just under $11 million. As a consequence, the company’s Ebitda margin fell from 20% last year to minus 25% this year, posting negative Ebitda of more than $6 million. For the first 6 months of 2011, Myriad had a profit of more than $7 million.
There could hardly be a time that is less suited for digesting an ill-fated acquisition. This obviously prompted CEO Wilkinson to resign with immediate effect on 26 September. Now, all hopes rest on CFO James Bodha to turn things around as he stands in as co-CEO with the company’s chief operating officer Gary Bunney and chief marketing officer Mike Grant. The search for a new full-time CEO is under way.
Myriads of problems for the CFO
Bodha has served as chief financial officer of Myriad since September 2009. He has more than 13 years of senior financial management experience with a track record of managing business operations in publicly listed companies. Prior to joining Myriad, Bodha was CFO at Aircom International, a provider of mobile network planning and optimisation from 2006 to 2009. Before that, he had been working as CFO of the global mobile handset software division of Openwave Systems, a Nasdaq-listed company based in San Francisco.
This vast experience makes him a highly valuable executive for Myriad in such troubled times. Nevertheless, steering the company back into smooth waters will arguably be his biggest challenge so far. As a first step to stabilise the company’s financial position, Myriad announced a rights issue on the very day its CEO departed. The company hopes to raise CHF 10 million ($10.7m) to “replenish cash reserves to complete the integration and rationalisation of Synchronica.” The aim is to “consolidate its leadership in the rapidly growing mobile social messaging market,” chairman Erik Hansen commented on the issue.
This shows that the interim CEOs are still sticking to Wilkinson’s ambitious M&A strategy. While the overall strategy of being a driver in, and not a subject of, sector consolidation might be reasonable, the experience with Synchronica shows how difficult it is to find matching M&A targets and not overburden one’s own company. One must wonder, however, where James Bodha was when the company decided to buy such a costly target in such uncertain times.
anne-kathrin.meves[at]cfo-insight.com
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