Tag Archives: CFO

New CFO at NCS Multistage

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NCS Multistage has appointed Michael Morrison as its new CFO and Treasurer. He replaces Ryan Hummer, who has been promoted to CEO following the retirement of Robert Nipper, the founder of the company. Mr. Nipper will remain on the Board.



NCS manufactures products used in the fracking of horizontal wells. It has revenues of $135 million and a market capitalization of $65 million.

The company has its head office in NW Houston and went public in April 2017 at the $17 per share. The current share price of $26 sounds good until you realize there was a 1-for-20 reverse stock split in 2020. In other words, on a like-for-like basis, the stock has dropped from $340 at IPO to $26 now.

Mr. Morrison was, until recently, the CFO at ION Geophysical, another Houston oilfield services company.  He joined that company in 2002 and became CFO in February 2020. Ion filed for bankruptcy protection in April 2022, due to continued ongoing weakness in the seismic sector.

Mr. Morrison will receive a base salary of $325,000.

8-K filing – NCS Multistage CFO

Carriage Services CFO to depart by end of year

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Ben Brink, the CFO of Carriage Services Inc, has announced he will be leaving at the end of the year to pursue other opportunities. The company has begun a search for a new CFO. Mr. Brink will assist the new CFO in a consulting capacity for the first six months of 2023.



Carriage Services is a leading provider of funeral and cemetery services and merchandise in the United States. Carriage operates 169 funeral homes in 26 states and 31 cemeteries in 11 states. The company has a market capitalization of $473 million.

Mr. Brink, who is 41, began his career at International Paper. He joined Carriage in 2009 as a Cash Manager and was promoted to CFO in 2015.

Chairman and CEO Mel Payne issued a very effusive press release praising Mr. Brink’s contributions to the company’s recent development. In the press release, the CEO stated that he offered Mr. Brink a severance payment of $1 million in cash or 30,000 shares (worth $965,000 at Friday’s close). Mr. Brink chose to take the shares.

SEC filing – 8-K Carriage CFO

Midstream company appoints new CFO

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Crestwood  Equity Partners has appointed John Black as its new CFO. He replaces Robert Halpin, who had been CFO since 2015. Mr Halpin will remain with the company as President, a role he took over in January.



Crestwood owns and operates midstream businesses primarily in the Williston, Powder River and Delaware Basins.  In February, it completed the acquisition of Oasis Midstream for $1.8 billion. The company currently has a market cap of $2.9 billion and has its head office in downtown Houston.

Mr. Black, age 34, joined Crestwood in 2014 and was formerly the Senior VP, Finance. Prior to joining Crestwood, he held positions at First Reserve and Citi. He will receive a base salary of $400,000.

Josh Wannarka, Senior VP, Investor Relations, has been promoted to to Mr. Black’s old position. He joined the company in 2015. In his new expanded role, Mr. Wannarka will oversee the investor relations team and the full financial planning and analysis function.

Andrew Thorington, VP of Finance, has been promoted to VP, Finance and Investor Relations. He joined the company in 2014.

Crestwood Equity – press release

Renewables company appoints new CFO

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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

Houston E&P appoints new CEO and CFO

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Epsilon Energy, based in Greenspoint area of North Houston, has appointed a new CEO and CFO.

Jason Stabell is replacing the retiring Mike Raleigh as CEO while Andrew Williamson replaces Lane Bond as CFO.

Mr. Stabell and Mr. Williamson worked together for many years at Merlin International, LLC, an E&P business with its primary operations in Egypt. The business was sold in 2019 to a SOCO International, a UK-listed company. Mr. Stabell stayed on as a consultant until 2021 while Mr. Williamson became the Corporate Development Manager at a small E&P company.

Epsilon primarily owns properties in the Marcellus basin in Pennsylvania. A few years ago, it started acquiring acreage in the Anadarko Basin in Oklahoma. However it is not the operator of those wells. The company has revenues of $48 million and a market capitalization of $130 million.

The departing executives were among the lowest paid executives for their positions. Mr. Raleigh, who had been CEO since 2013, had a base salary of $150,000, though between 2018-2020 he did not take a salary. He will receive a severance of $150,000 plus $480,000 in lieu of equity awards for 2021 and 2022.

Mr. Bond, who had been CFO since 2012 and is also retiring, had a base salary of $200,000. He will receive no severance, but will receive a pro-rata bonus for 2022 of $37,500. However, he will be engaged as a consultant until March 2023 at a monthly rate of $16,667.

Incoming CEO Stabell will have a base salary of $300,000 while Mr. Williamson will have a base of $230,000.

SEC filing – Epsilon Energy CEO CFO change

 

Team Inc appoints new CFO

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Team Inc, based in Sugar Land, has appointed Nelson Haight as its new CFO. He joins from Key Energy Services, where he had been CFO since June 2020. He replaces Susan Ball, who resigned in November 2021.



Team provides testing, inspection and repair services to industries such as refining and power, though the company describes itself as a ‘global leading provider of integrated, digitally-enabled asset performance assurance and optimization solutions’.

The company has had a rough few years following a couple of disastrous acquisitions made in 2015-2016 for $538 million that went south very quickly. At the end of March 2022, the company had shareholders’ equity of $27 million and long-term debt of $501 million.  In the first quarter, the company made a net loss of $32 million on revenues of $219 million.

Amerino Gatti, who had been CEO since 2018, left the company in March to be replaced by interim CEO, Keith Tucker. Mr. Gatti received a severance payment of 18 months of salary ($1.275 million in total, to be paid over 12 months) plus a 12-month consulting contract of $39,583 per month.

The company hired Alvarez and Marsal in 2017 to assist in identifying cost-saving opportunities. After Ms. Ball left, Matt Kvarda, an A&M employee, had been acting as interim CFO.  Since the beginning of 2021, the company has paid A&M nearly $12 million dollars in consulting fees, which includes the interim CFO services.

Mr. Haight will receive a base salary of $450,000. He also received a signing bonus of $25,000 and a guaranteed bonus for 2022 of at least $150,000.

No word on Mr. Haight’s replacement at Key, which is now a private company. In 2020, an out-of-court restructuring resulted in the lenders receiving 97% of the new equity of Key.

SEC filing – Team CFO appointment

Houston biopharma company replaces its CFO

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Aravive, a Houston biopharmaceutical company, has replaced its CFO. Vinay Shah, who has been CFO since 2010, has resigned and Rudy Howard appointed in his place.

The company is conducting clinical trials on a protein that inhibits the signals produced by the AXL protein. These signals help proliferate tumors and cause the body to suppress its immune system. The trials are being conducted on patients with ovarian, kidney or pancreatic cancers.

Aravive went public in October 2018 via a reverse takeover of Versartis, a biopharma company based in California. The transaction valued the company at $39 million. Currently, the company has a similar market cap with its share price being $1.21. A year ago, its share price was around around $5-$6.

Mr Shah will receive a severance payment of $286,443 (nine months, paid monthly) and will enter into a consulting contract for four months with a monthly payment of $44,557.

Mr. Howard will receive a base salary of $395,000. He also received stock options on 290,000 units that will vest over four years.

Mr. Howard was previously the CFO of vTv Therapeutics, a struggling biopharma company, based in North Carolina. He resigned in December 2021, receiving a one year severance payment of $325,000. At that time, the company let go 16 of its 25 employees.

SEC filing – Aravive CFO

Weatherford CFO is out after less than two years

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Keith Jennings, CFO of Weatherford International, is out after less than two years with the company. His last day will be July 31. The company has begun an executive search for his replacement.



Weatherford filed for bankruptcy in July 2019, emerged in December 2019 and relisted its shares on Nasdaq in June 2021. At the time of the relisting, its share price was $12.81. It is now $31, giving it a market capitalization of over $2 billion.

The company still has over $2 billion in net debt, but it has had some success in moving away on high volume, low margin business. This is evidenced by its gross margin percentage of 27%  being the highest since 2011.

Mr Jennings joined from Calumet Specialty Products Partners in September 2020, where he was CFO.  Earlier in his career he spent seven years as VP and Treasurer at Cameron International, leaving a few months after its takeover by Schlumberger.

Six weeks after Mr. Jennings started, Girish Saligram was appointed CEO.

Mr. Jennings had a base salary of $500,000. He will receive a cash severance of almost $1.8 million (1.5 times base salary and target bonus, plus pro-rated bonus for 2022). In addition, according to the annual proxy filed last month, $5 million of restricted stock awarded to Mr. Jennings will also vest.

Calumet is based in Indianapolis, so Weatherford gave Mr Jennings a relocation allowance of $150,000. He also received $500,000 as a sign-on bonus.

SEC filing – Jennings departure

Quanta Services promotes CFO to operations role

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Quanta Services has promoted CFO Derrick Jensen to Executive VP, Business Operations. The company is the third Houston-area public company this week to promote its CFO, following Halliburton and US Well Services.



Jayshree Desai moves from Chief Corporate Development Officer to CFO. Both changes are effective July, 2022.

Quanta designs, installs, repairs and maintains energy and communications infrastructure. It has revenues of $13 billion and a market capitalization of $17 billion.

Mr. Jansen has been with Quanta since its inception in 1997 and has been the CFO for the last 10 years.

Ms. Desai joined Quanta in January 2020. She was previously the founder of a renewable energy company focused on utility-scale wind, solar and storage development and COO of a electric transmission development company. Prior to that, she was CFO of EDP Renewables North America.

No new compensation arrangements for either executive were disclosed.

SEC filing – Quanta CFO change

 

Leadership changes at US Well Services

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US Well Services Nyx Clean Fleet® Frac Unit

Kyle O’Neil, CFO of US Well Services, has been promoted to CEO, replacing co-founder, Joel Broussard, who becomes non-executive Chairman. Josh Shapiro, currently VP of Finance, is promoted to CFO.



Poor financial performance

US Well Services is a struggling pressure pumping company that has its head office in the Galleria area of Houston.  The company was founded in 2012 and it struggled even before it was taken public for $274 million by a SPAC in November 2018. In early 2017, the company had completed an out-of-court restructuring that resulted in $118 million of debt being converted to equity.

Mr. O’Neil was appointed CFO when the business went public and joined from TCW Direct Lending, the main equity shareholder.

The company’s unique selling point was that it had patented all-electric hydraulic fracturing which uses less fuel and generates less emissions than conventional diesel fleets. At the time of going public, it had 11 fracking fleets, including two that were electric-powered. It had plans to add five more electric units.

As of May 2021, the company still had 11 fleets, though five were electric. The company has since sold off its diesel units to become a pure-play electric fracking company. It is currently building four of its next generation units and will put them into service later this year.

As of December 2021, the company had negative shareholders’ equity of $129 million and debt of $172 million. The current stock price of USWS is 91 cents. The market cap is $64 million.

In with the new…

Mr. O’Neil will receive a base salary of $540,000 and was granted 600,000 deferred stock units that will vest over three years. He also received a performance stock award worth $650,000, that vests under certain conditions.

Josh Shapiro, the new CFO, joined the company in March 2019. Prior to that, he worked at Piper Sandler as an investment banker. His new base salary will be $400,000.

…Out with the old

Mr Broussard will receive a severance of $950,000, to be paid in three instalments over the next 18 months. He also received 1.1 million restricted stock units. Half vests in 6 months, the rest in 18 months.

The company also announced that Matt Bernard had resigned as Chief Administrative Officer. Mr. Bernard was also the CFO between 2015-2018.  Mr. Bernard isn’t receiving any severance. However, he has signed a consulting agreement that will pay him $13,417 monthly. The agreement can be terminated by either party with 30 days notice.

SEC filing – management changes