Ab Dynamics PLC (LON:ABDP) Chief Executive Officer Tim Rogers caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss his resignation of CEO, the new Board appointments and the position the company is in moving forward
Q1: Now Tim, you’ve announced a number of Board changes this morning including your own resignation, what does this mean for Ab Dynamics and have you found a successor yet?
A1: The company has been growing rapidly over the last 5 years and now with a market cap of over £100 million, it’s time to actually strengthen up our PLC Board. The announcement today was reiterating the ability to bring in one of our existing employers onto the existing PLC Board and also bringing someone from the outside to strengthen up our business development.
I, myself, am stepping down, I won’t be leaving until the end of year and no, we haven’t found a successor yet but the plan really is to be able to go out and find the right person for the company, to lead the company through the next stage of growth.
Q2: I think you’ve touched on this but how long will you be staying with the business?
A2: I’ve announced that I want to step down at the end of the year but it’s important that there’s a smooth transition to the new management, I will stay as long as required to make sure the business is stable and to also make sure that the new management team that takes over can do so with a certain amount of continuity. So, although I’m actually saying that I’m leaving at the end of the year, I will actually be staying on for as long as it requires to stabilise the business.
Q3: You’ve strengthened the Board with two appointments, can you tell us a bit more about these individuals?
A3: So, the first person is Matt Hubbard, who’s been with the company since 1999, he’s been key to the company’s growth and he’s become a key executive inside the organisation. A lot of the products and a lot of the technology that has been developed by Ab Dynamics over the last 10 years has really been down to Matt’s direct efforts in this regard. For the last 2 years, he’s been established as the Operating Officer and he’s taken over a lot of the order fulfilment side from me and he’s grown into that role really well and I think, going forward, he’s going to be a key individual to the company’s growth and so, that’s one of the reasons we’re bringing him on to the PLC’s Board.
The second person is Richard Higginbotham, he’s formally of Cantor and before then he used to be with Charles Stanley, he’s been an analyst for many years, he’s well respected in the City and he’s also been connected with the company since our IPO in May 2013. He knows very much about what we do, he’s very knowledgeable about the corporate sector we’re in, as a sector specialist, and I think he strengthens up our whole corporate development side of our business. He will be instrumental to help drive the strategy of the Board in the company going forward.
Q4: Would you say that Ab Dynamics remains in a position of strength to grow following these changes?
A4: Yes, and I think part of the strengthening of the Board is actually to prepare the company for the next stage of its growth, the company has huge potential, there’s a whole range of new products and new services coming through.
The whole idea of the new team is to be responsible for moving the company, or transitioning it from its current SME status to a mid-sized company, and I think that’s really where I feel we need that extra strength and the idea really is to get the team in place that can take the company to the next step.
There are certain geographical things we’d like to do over the next year, we’d like to establish offices in Germany, support groups in China and America and not least of which we want to get the new products we’re working on at the moment, like the simulator, out to the market to drive the company’s next stage of growth.
So, yes, the company is definitely in a good position to grow to the next stage, the new factory will be coming on stream hopefully in September/October and that’s an ability to bring the company under one roof, it will allow us to grow our development programmes. More recently, when we went onto the market back in 2013, we were about 42 people, and we’ve just gone past the 115 and so it’s been a massive area of growth for the company over the last 5 years.
It feels like I’ve condensed 10 years into 5 years which is why I think it’s time for me to ring the changes and get the next series of management in.
