Jim Johnson Resigned as CEO of BakBone

BakBone Software, Incorporated announced the Board of Directors has initiated a leadership transition program under which Steve Martin has been appointed to the additional responsibilities of Interim Chief Executive Officer effective immediately. Mr. Martin, who joined BakBone in August of 2008, will remain the Company’s CFO and succeed James R. Johnson, who has ceased to be the Company’s President and CEO and has resigned as a member of the Company’s Board effective immediately. The Board has also retained an executive search firm to initiate a search for a new President and CEO.

In addition, BakBone Software reported that bookings for the fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31, 2010 are currently expected to be approximately $14.1 million, which would enable the Company to achieve full fiscal year bookings within the lower end of guidance of $56.5 million to $57.5 million. The Company currently has approximately $4.8 million in cash and $10.7 million in receivables as of March 31, 2010.

In addition, the Company reported today that it expects to exercise its right to limit the cash component of its June 2010 obligations to Coldspark shareholders under the acquisition agreement of May 2009 to approximately $810,000. The Company intends to report fiscal fourth quarter and full year results in early June.

“We thank Jim for his contributions to BakBone over the past six years and wish him well in his future endeavors. Our focus over the next few weeks will be in getting fiscal 2011 off to a successful start, increasing our efficiencies and productivity, and maximizing the market opportunities available to our many product lines. Our team remains excited about the potential for our company in the marketplace as well as executing to that potential,” commented Mr. Martin.

Comments

The abrupt departure of board's director, president and CEO Jim Johnson is a surprise. He started with BakBone in November 2004, replacing Keith Rickart. His background: president and CTO of SoftBrands an prior to that at Sterling Software and Application Development Systems.

bakbone_jim_johnso

Johnson did a good job, finally solving the company's problems with the financial community after being delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2006. The firm made three good acquisitions to improve its portfolio of technologies: Constant Data in CDP in 2006, certain assets of Asempra for only $3 million in 2009, and ColdSpark, in enterprise email archiving for $16 million the same year. And finally its flagship software, NetVault, continued to evolve regularly.

Furthermore, latest financial results of BakBone were good: revenues of $47.1 million for the nine-month period ending December 31, 2009 (+13% compared to one year ago) with net income of $2.4 million (vs. net loss of $4.5 million).

Last March the board of BakBone granted options to purchase 700,000 company’s common shares to Johnson with the options of becoming "fully vested in the event the executive officer is terminated without cause within 12 months following a change in control of the company."

bakbone_steve_martin

CFO Steve Martin, 49, will be interim CEO until BakBone find a replacement. He joined the company in August 2008. He served formerly as acting chief accounting officer for Leap Wireless International, a publicly traded wireless communications company. Prior to that, he was CFO of Stratagene (acquired by Agilent Technologies in June 2007), another public firm, in specialized research and clinical diagnostic products.

BakBone's ’s board approved a cash incentive award of $50,000 payable to Martin upon the appointment of a permanent CEO.