Anora: Another change of CEO

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 10/16/2024 at 7:00 am EEST.

Anora announced last night that its CEO Jacek Pastuszka will resign once the company finds a new CEO. Pastuszka has only been in his position for a year, and the company’s CFO changed earlier last summer. We view Pastuszka's short tenure and the high management turnover as slightly negative.

Pastuszka's tenure comes to a short end without a turnaround in results

Jacek Pastuszka became CEO of Anora about a year ago, replacing Pekka Tennilä, who had to leave the company at that time. Pastuszka had a clear mission and goal to improve Anora's profitability, which had fallen to a very low level last year. However, the company has failed to achieve this, with a profit warning issued earlier this week suggesting that the company's result this year will remain around the 2023 level and even deteriorate during the rest of the year relative to the comparison period (see recent report). In Anora's business, for example, pricing/assortment periods are quite long and fixed, so we suspect that the measures taken even at the beginning of the Pastuszka period are only beginning to be reflected in the company's results. However, it appears that the measures taken, at least so far, have not been sufficient to turn around the results.

We find such a quick departure from the company surprising, although according to the press release Pastuszka will continue as CEO until a new one is appointed. The poor performance may have put pressure on the company to replace the CEO, but the press release indicates that the decision seems to have been driven by Pastuszka's desire to retire. With the company in need of a clear change of direction, we see a slight downside in the possibility of a lengthy interim period while a new CEO is recruited and can eventually take over. Appointing a new CEO from within the company would of course speed up the process somewhat, but at least in the previous round the company's board opted for external recruitment.