Chief executive of music streaming service Guvera, Darren Herft, has stepped down with fellow co-founder of the service Claes Loborg taking on the top job in the interim.
Guvera and Herft have recently come under fire for the business' failed $1.4 billion ASX listing, with The Australian reporting that in spite of the company's recent issues, Loborg is focused on getting the service back in the black.
“The next steps for us will be to stabilise the company, make changes to where our product is live globally, work with investor support to stabilise our partner relationships, increase revenues and get back on our path of growth once more,” he says.
This news comes a month after Guvera announced it had placed two of its subsidiaries, Guvera Australia and Guv Services, into administration. By putting these businesses into administration, it was hoped Guvera could get its monthly cash expenditure down to about $1.6 million, with the company also slashing roughly 60 jobs as another way to cut costs.
A lot of these issues can be traced back to the company's failed initial public offering (IPO). Guvera was able to raise $185 million in capital with the aim of floating and was looking to raise another $100m, however it was blocked by the ASX with its level of debt, losses and low revenue causing many to take concern with the listing. In the first six months of this financial year the company lost $56 million.
While there is a lot of competition in the music streaming landscape Loborg told The Australian that Guvera is an entertainment company, which is focusing on creating a new business model altogether.
“Changing anything that involves changing how people have been trained to view things I am told is impossible, but I don’t believe its impossible — I believe it’s hard, and its taken a lot longer than I had anticipated, but the reward of actually making it happen is too large to ignore.”
Herft remains a board member of Guvera.
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