Limelight To Replace CFO: Expected To Get More Agressive In The Market

Limelight announced today that CFO Matt Hale would be leaving the company at the end of this year. While the release says he will leave at the end of December, it is expected that he will be relieved of duties as soon as a replacement is found. I expect Limelight will probably hire a new CFO in a matter of weeks and make the transition as soon as possible.

While I would not normally post on the changing of a CFO, in this case, I think it is relevant for a few reasons. Matt has been at Limelight pre-IPO and I think it was time for a new CFO to come in who is willing to take a few more risks and try and make some major moves. Limelight needs to be more aggressive in M&A, marketing and the potential sale of the company. Bringing in a new CFO who is going to let Limelight spend more marketing dollars and drive more M&A discussions is exactly what Limelight needs right now.

This is also a chance for Limelight to try and improve their reputation on Wall Street. While replacing one person is not going to do that overnight, if Limelight has a plan in place to do more than just change the CFO, like give out additional data points about their business, more on Wall Street may take notice. I’m not implying that all of a sudden they will have faith in the company, but they may be more willing to keep a closer eye on what Limelight is doing and take more of an interest. Limelight has to do something with regards to Wall Street and needs to be more visible and get investors excited again about the CDN industry as a whole. Start out with where the industry is going, what the potential is and then drill down on how your company might make an impact.

I also think that if Limelight does not show some revenue growth within the next two quarters, the board will make more changes at the executive management level.