Pureprofile’s former CEO and founder Paul Chan exits after 18 years
Paul Chan, founder and former CEO of online market research company Pureprofile, has left the company after 18 years.
Effective from today, Chan will step down from his role as chief innovations officer and from the board as managing director, the company announced on the ASX.
Chan’s departure is effective immediately
I can’t see how PPL isn’t in deep trouble as it is currently constituted.
Market-cap down to $15.1m (Shareprice @12 cents…) as at Friday midday, and someone is selling down (nearly 1m shares sold since Monday).
The Cohort acquisition was a mistake IMHO, it was an overpay for a business that had peaked and was on its way down (but still making money I hasten to add) in a sector (lead gen and Co-reg) that is tightening. Pureprofile itself has always only been a slightly better than breakeven proposition at best, and the Sparc business is also coming off its peak in an environment where arbitrage in Programmatic is getting tougher.
I respect Jonesy, but it’s going to be a tough ask to justify his fairly hefty salary (listed company…check it out if you’re interested).
The options as I see it are:
a) Privatise, and hope to trade out with a bit less scrutiny
b) Get taken out by one of the bigger ad-tech stacks or one of the large performance players like Rakuten, Amobee, CJ…
c) Sell off the pieces that have some residual value (Cohort? Sparc?) and focus the business on the PP product
Paul Chan certainly had a red-hot go, but I can’t help feeling this wasn’t the exit he had in mind…