Archaea Energy has appointed Brian McCarthy as its new CFO, replacing Eric Javidi, who left in February after ten months with a $2.95 million cash severance.

Archaea develops, constructs and maintains renewable natural gas facilities (RNG) that capture waste emissions from landfills and converts them into low-grade fuels and electricity. It currently has 12 of them. The company also has 33 landfill gas to electric facilities, some of which were added after a recent acquisition.

The company is based in the Galleria area and was taken public in September 2021 by a SPAC based in Pennsylvania, Rice Acquisition Corp.  The SPAC actually acquired Archaea LLC for $347 million and Aria Energy LLC for $680 million, with the combined business being renamed Archaea Energy. The stock is trading at around $19, about a $1 higher than the price when the deal closed.

The company was supposedly conducting a search process for Mr. Javidi’s replacement, but ended up appointing Mr. McCarthy, who was the previous CFO and had been acting as the interim CFO since March. (Technically, he was the CFO of the legacy business from January 2019 to May 2021). Between his CFO stints, Mr. McCarthy was the Chief Investment Officer of the company.

No compensation details were disclosed for Mr. McCarthy. However, last month, the company adopted a new executive severance plan which limits the severance outside a change-of-control event to 1x base salary plus 1x pro-rata target bonus.

SEC filing – Archaea CFO appointment