CPI Card Group disclosed last week that its chief financial officer, Jeffrey Hochstadt, agreed to leave that role as of Feb. 13, exiting shortly before the payments card and technology company plans to present its fourth-quarter report.
To fill the CFO role, on an interim basis, CPI tapped Terra Grantham, who is currently the company’s senior vice president of enterprise strategy and growth, according to a Feb. 17 filing last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Grantham was previously CPI’s Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis and Strategy where she also had responsibility for Treasury. Hochstadt will stick around in an advisory role until the end of June, according to the filing.
Meanwhile, the Littleton, Colorado company said in a press release on Friday that it plans to release its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings report on March 5.
CPI, which is led by CEO John Lowe and has about 1,500 employees, provides credit, debit and prepaid cards as well as digital payments software for financial institutions that issue cards, fintechs, prepaid program managers, and card processors. CPI’s cards include those made from metal and recycled materials, and it also offers contactless cards that use near field communications technology.
CPI opened a new payment card manufacturing factory last year in Fort Wayne, Indiana, replacing a similar production plant in the city.
The company reported about $20 million in net income for 2024 on $480.6 million in annual revenue, according to the release. That profit was down from nearly $24 million in 2023 on lower revenue that year of $444.5 million, according to its most recent annual filing with the SEC.
The company’s stock price has tumbled about 60% over the past year.
The CFO switch comes just a couple months after the company separately announced a shift in its ownership. In December, CPI said a major shareholder, investment firm Parallel49 Equity, would sell part of its stake to a smaller investor, Tricor Pacific Capital, and to the company’s chairman, Sanford ‘Sandy’ Riley, according to a press release at that time.
As part of the transaction, Parallel49 expected to sell 1.9 million shares to Tricor and 200,000 shares to Riley, who joined the board in May 2023, according to the company’s website.
Parallel49, which invested in the company in 2007 and held onto a 60% stake after CPI’s 2015 initial public offering, still expected to hold 2.7 million shares, or about a 24% stake, down from 4.8 million shares, a 42% stake, after the transaction, according to the release.
“We believe this transaction will support our shareholders, as the purchase of these shares by committed investors helps provide greater clarity on our long-term ownership structure,” Lowe said at the time of the stock sale.
