The reference to an 'Australian based CEO' is a red herring. Clearly the reasons for Swami's departure had nothing to do with his location. His location was known and agreed to when he was hired, as the benefits to having him based in the U.S far outweigh the benefits of him being based in Australia.
While the company's revenues are continuing to increase in the rest of the world, the U.S is the biggest market and biggest source of revenue and it makes sense for CEO to be based in the U.S. Requiring a CEO to be based in Australia, where time zones mean they are asleep when people in Melbourne are awake is in my opinion, ridiculous.
I've worked across timezones (and I still do), and I can tell you, working with yanks means either you or they, will often have to get up at a stupid time like 4am just to have a meeting. This is not conducive to productivity. And if an Australian-based CEO wants to have a face to face meeting with staff, client or partner in the U.S where PNV's biggest market is, that's a massive 14 hour flight just from MEL to LAX. If you need to head to the other side of the American continent that's another 4-6 hour flight.
I'm really disappointed in the wording of this release. Making that kind of unnecessary reference in the statement also basically rules out any great candidates that may be based in the U.S, all just to misdirect us on the real reasons for Swami's departure.
In terms of Swami's performance, I have said it before, I didn't think he absolutely set the world on fire, but I thought he did a solid job, I'd give him a 7/10. He has driven the company into new markets, worked with clinicians to understand their needs to develop new products to support them to use BTM in a wider range of procedures, further fortifying PNV's moat bY entrenching the use of BTM in hospitals. BTM has entered numerous additional countries and has become the #1 or #2 player in those markets in a very short period of time.
The company is also being set up for entry into China and Japan which are notoriously difficult to get access to. They've also set the foundations for India. While some people here are disappointed with the 'lack of progress' in India, I am actually surprised at what appears to be an unreasonable expectation that we could enter a market that isn't even served by biological matrices, and then just go from zero to 100. It is not like other countries where surgeons are familiar with a biological matrix, and can adjust existing procedures to use BTM. Entering India means you need to build from the ground up, as surgeons there have zero experience of dermal matrices at all.
And in terms of dealing with bureaucracy, I can only imagine how much more difficult and slow-moving it would be to introduce a new medical device.
Anyway, I thought the recent reported half a million dollars in sales was a good start. For those expecting the company to go from zero to 100 in China and Japan, I suggest you read up on the challenges of other companies of navigating the bureaucracy there to temper your expectations.
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