Pandora‘s financial health continues to be the talk of the music business, after the digital service posted cumulative net losses in excess of $250m in the first nine months of this year.
Could that situation change under a new Chief Financial Officer? We’re about to find out.
Pandora has told its investors that it has initiated a search for a full-time CFO, having secured direct deals with all of the major publishers and labels ahead of launching a fully on-demand Spotify rival in 2017.
The new hiring will report to Mike Herring, who currently holds the positions of President and CFO.
“With our new, expanded product set, Mike will be required to devote more of his time and attention to driving revenue and on the successful execution of Pandora’s business model evolution and growth.”
Herring is now casting aside the CFO position, leaving an opening for a new senior exec at the business.
“Mike has admirably balanced the demands of his role as President with the financial, accounting and investment community stewardship required in his role as CFO,” Pandora VP Dominic Paschel told investors.
“Under our primarily ad-based model and in the interest of expedience as we pursued our direct deals, consolidating all these responsibilities with one executive made sense.”
He added: “With our new, expanded product set, Mike will be required to devote more of his time and attention to driving revenue and on the successful execution of Pandora’s business model evolution and growth.
“Related to this change, we have hired a leading executive search firm to find a highly qualified external candidate to fill the role of CFO.”
Herring (pictured) originally joined Pandora in early 2013, having served on the boards of startups including Fluid and Gobbler. Herring also spent time as CFO at Ancestry.com and Omniture and was VP of Global Operations for Adobe.
Pandora parted ways with former CEO Brian McAndrews in March after seeing $5bn wiped off its market cap over the course of two years.
The US-based platform attracted 77.9m active listeners at the close of Q3, down from 78.1m in the same three-month period (July-Sept) of 2015.
It was the second consecutive quarter in 2016 that the company’s listener base suffered a year-on-year decline.
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