Intuit CEO Smith, CTO Stansbury to step down, Goodarzi, Tessel to take over those roles
Intuit said CEO Brad Smith will be stepping down at the end of the year to be replaced by Sasan Goodarzi, currently general manager of the company's small business and self-employed unit.
Also: Intuit tops Q3 earnings targets after strong tax season
The company outlined its succession plans that will be effective Jan. 1. CTO Tayloe Stansbury will also step down Jan. 1. Marianna Tessel, chief product development officer for small business and self-employed unit, will take over. She held senior engineering roles at Intuit, Ariba, VMware and Docker.
Intuit has transitioned to the cloud and broadened its total addressable market under Smith and Stansbury. Smith doubled Intuit's customer base to about 50 million customers and doubled revenue.
Also: Intuit sells its largest data center amid move to AWS
With the addition of Goodarzi and Tessel, Intuit is likely to keep its small business focus and platform strategy going. Smith said:
We've also continued our long history of leadership development and built a deep bench of leaders who will make up the next generation of Intuit management.
Until he becomes CEO Jan. 1, Goodarzi will continue to run Intuit's small business and self-employed group. He has run that division since May 2016. Goodarzi also was general manager of Intuit's Consumer Tax Group and chief information officer.
Alex Chriss will take over the small business and self-employed division when Goodarzi moves up.
Intuit reported solid fiscal fourth quarter earnings of 18 cents a share on revenue of $988 million, up 17 percent from a year ago. The company's strategy revolves around creating one big ecosystem for Intuit.
For the year, Intuit reported the following results.
As for the outlook, Intuit projected fiscal 2019 revenue between $6.53 billion and $6.63 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $6.40 a share to $6.50 a share. The consumer and small business units will grow between 9 percent and 11 percent.
While the results were strong and better than expected, Intuit shares were off in afterhours trading due to the leadership transition news.