What a sad day for me to see it coming. I have known in my heart that the day would come eventually but did not know this soon.
Stanley Ma, the Food Court King, will step down as CEO of MTY Food Group effective November 2018.
For those who do not know MTY, click any of the links below.
MTY Food Group= Frugal CEO with high ownership + Growing free cash flow + Minimal dilution
One good news is that he will remain as Chairman so it is not like he will sell all of his shares and enjoy his life in Miami. He stated that he will remain as active Chairman so I am somewhat relieved. Also his daughter, Jennifer Ma is currently working as senior director of marketing & operations so that gives me little more comfort. That being said, I will have to closely watch the company to make sure MTY keeps delivering results.
It is interesting to see that current CFO, Eric Lefebvre will be the next CEO of MTY and current COO, Claude St-Pierre will step down as COO. It isn’t unusual for CFO to make CEO but considering Claude has been with MTY much longer than Eric and also has more demanding position (COO > CFO), I am quite surprised about the outcome. At least Stanley is making sure minimizing potential conflicts between Eric and Claude by retiring Claude on the same day he is retiring.
I kinda saw that Eric would be the successor of MTY. Stanley Ma is known for not issuing stock options and warrants but he did in 2017!
He issued $3M worth of stock options to Eric only in 2017. Yeah right… Stanley already had Eric in mind as the successor of MTY and has been grooming him and making sure Eric sticks around.
Today’s stock market reacted quite badly on the news.
It was up 3-4% but when the news was released around 1:30, the stock reversed its gain and dropped by 3%. Oh well… I don’t blame selling shareholders as they knew that MTY= Stanley Ma.
Stanley stated in the news release that
We have been reiterating for many years that MTY is no longer a one-person company, but rather a team of 700 people.
So I would like to give the new CEO Eric a chance to prove himself. Under the guidance of Stanley, I am cautiously optimistic that MTY will deliver.
I sold it because I don’t see the future of mty without Stanley at the helm
The time will tell. Stanley will still be around so I am not worried!
MTY has been on a tear! Great company with solid management!
I have trimmed it a bit but still hold a significant position.