Fitbit finance chief William Zerella resigns

Fitbit (FIT) finance chief William Zerella is resigning from the company effective June 15 as he is taking up the CFO position at an autonomous vehicle technology startup. For ensuring continuity of operations, chief accounting officer Ronald Kisling has been promoted to the CFO role. Also, the wearable device maker reaffirmed its current quarter and fiscal 2018 guidance.

Since June 2014, Zerella has been serving as CFO and has guided the company in filing an IPO, which is one of the largest consumer electronics IPOs in history. The company has a retail footprint across 47,000 stores and has active users of over 25 million across 86 countries.

Zerella had a major role in the upliftment of the company in the midst of competition from peers like Xiaomi, Apple (AAPL) and Samsung. Fitbit achieved the top spot in the wearable vendors compiled by the International Data Corporation. The overall wearables market is expected to grow from 113.2 million shipments in 2017 to 222.3 million in 2021.

In the recently completed first-quarter, Fitbit sold 2.2 million wearable devices helped by a healthy mix of watches and wearables. But this is 26.6% lower than last year. Average selling price rose 16% to $112 per device.

The wearable device maker reaffirmed its current quarter and fiscal 2018 guidance, after the resignation of finance chief William Zerella.

Kisling, who has been promoted to CFO, will lead the company’s global finance organization, reporting to executive chief James Park. Before serving as CAO of Fitbit, Kisling has served as the CFO of multiple public and private technology companies.

In addition, Fitbit reaffirmed its revenue and earnings guidance for the second quarter and fiscal 2018. The company has raised confidence in its outlook that smartwatch revenue will be more than 50% of sales in the second half of 2018.

The fitness giant had earlier expected revenue of $275-$295 million and a loss of $0.27-$0.23 per share for the second quarter. For fiscal 2018, Fitbit had expected revenue of $1.5 billion and predicted free cash flow to slip lower than revenue, seeing a breakeven in the year.

Shares of Fitbit are trading up about 2% on the NYSE in the morning hours of trading. The stock had been trading between $4.51 and $7.32 for the past 52 weeks.