Bloomberg News
Fitbit Inc. said Wednesday that Chief Financial Officer Bill Zerella will be leaving the company on June 15 to take a job with an autonomous-vehicle startup.
“Bill laid the foundation for future success,” Chief Executive James Park told MarketWatch. “We feel we’re transitioning at a good time because Fitbit is well positioned for future growth.”
The company’s chief accounting officer, Ron Kisling, will take over the CFO post.
Park said that it’s “pretty rare” that the No. 2 person in the finance department has experience as the CFO of a public company, a reference to Kisling’s prior stint as the finance chief of semiconductor company Nanometrics Inc. before he made the move to Fitbit in 2014.
Zerella told MarketWatch that his departure was “a personal decision” as he wants “the opportunity to take an earlier-stage company toward rapid-stage growth in the future.”
Fitbit has tried to pivot toward smartwatches and apps within the broader health ecosystem, and Zerella has helped the company with its acquisitions of smartwatch company Pebble and health-coaching platform Twine Health.
After the company’s last earnings announcement, Zerella said that Fitbit was open to “targeted M&A” as it looks for ways to deploy some of the nearly $700 million it has on its balance sheet. Park told MarketWatch that Fitbit has been “fairly successful in identifying companies that fit into our strategy” and that he thinks “that’s going to continue” with the new CFO.
Fitbit shares are down 84% since the company’s 2015 IPO, though they’re up 17% in the past year, while the S&P 500 has gained 13%. The stock was up 13% to start the week, due in part to Fitbit’s Monday announcements that it had sold more than 1 million Versa smartwatches since mid-April and that it was its fastest-selling product in history.