Concerned Shareholders of Oportun Financial Corporation Call on Three Directors to Resign Based on Their Unwillingness to Replace Value-Destructive Management
2024年7月25日 - 11:45PM
ビジネスワイヤ(英語)
Group Highlights Just 28.4% of Total
Outstanding Shares Voted For Nominating and Corporate Governance
Committee Chair Ginny Lee in Uncontested Election, Signaling a
Clear Lack of Confidence Among Investors
Urges Ms. Lee, Neil Williams and Louis
Miramontes to Resign From the Board Given Their Apparent Inability
to Hold CEO Raul Vazquez Accountable for Poor Financial Results and
an ~80% Share Price Decline
Wants the Board to Finally Appoint a New CEO
with Relevant Industry Experience to Initiate a Turnaround
Bradley Radoff and Josh Schechter (together with their
affiliates, the “Concerned Shareholders” or “we”) today issued the
below open letter to the Board of Directors (the “Board”) of
Oportun Financial Corporation (NASDAQ: OPRT) regarding the need for
three directors to resign following the 2024 Annual Meeting of
Shareholders and the Board to appoint a new Chief Executive
Officer.
***
Oportun Financial Corporation 2 Circle Star Way San Carlos,
California 94070 Attention: The Board of Directors (Jo Ann
Barefoot, Mohit Daswani, Ginny Lee, Carlos Minetti, Louis P.
Miramontes, Scott Parker, Sandy Smith, Richard Tambor, Raul Vazquez
and R. Neil Williams)
Members of the Board,
We are meaningful shareholders of Oportun who have previously
expressed our concerns to you regarding the appointment of a CEO
who lacks relevant industry experience, the Company’s poor
financial results under said chief executive and the apparent lack
of independent oversight in the boardroom. Recent developments,
including the voting results of Oportun’s 2024 Annual Meeting of
Shareholders (the “Annual Meeting”), have only strengthened our
conviction that the Board needs to take immediate action to reverse
the Company’s significant destruction of value since its 2019
initial public offering.
Given the fact that just 28.4% of the total outstanding shares
supported Ginny Lee’s uncontested re-election, shareholders clearly
believe that Ms. Lee should assume accountability for her apparent
failures as Chair of the Company’s Nominating and Corporate
Governance Committee. We believe Ms. Lee should immediately resign
from the Board.
We also call for the resignations of directors Neil Williams and
Louis Miramontes. Following Mr. Williams and chief executive Raul
Vazquez’s overlapping tenures at Intuit, it appears obvious Mr.
Williams is unwilling to hold Mr. Vazquez accountable for Oportun’s
disappointing operating results and the Company’s approximately 80%
share price decline over the past 12 years.1 Mr. Miramontes, who
has served on the Board for 10 years now, has overseen this
destruction of virtually all shareholder value.
We believe only a reconstituted Board will make the necessary
changes – starting with the dismissal of Mr. Vazquez, whose
appointment has proven to be a mistake. We have no confidence in
management’s ability to fix the business and believe a turnaround
can only occur with a new CEO who possesses the right
experience.
Lastly, we reiterate our demand that the Company use
industry-standard GAAP metrics instead of management’s concocted
Adjusted EBITDA, which only serves to artificially inflate
executives’ compensation figures.
We look forward to managerial and governance changes at
Oportun.
Sincerely,
Brad Radoff & Josh Schechter
***
__________________________________ 1 Source: Bloomberg. Share
price data is calculated from market open on September 26, 2019
through market close on July 24, 2024.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240725250410/en/
Greg Lempel greg@fondrenlp.com