MicroStrategy‘s Michael Saylor is leaving his role as CEO to become Executive Chairman of the company, according to a statement released by the company on Tuesday afternoon. The company’s president, Phong Le, will take the reins from Saylor.
Saylor has been in the role of chief executive since launching the company in 1989. MicroStrategy went public in 1998.
MicroStrategy’s stock is down over 48% this year. Bitcoin is down over 51% during that same time period.
“I believe that splitting the roles of Chairman and CEO will enable us to better pursue our two corporate strategies of acquiring and holding bitcoin and growing our enterprise analytics software business. As Executive Chairman I will be able to focus more on our bitcoin acquisition strategy and related bitcoin advocacy initiatives, while Phong will be empowered as CEO to manage overall corporate operations,” said Mr. Saylor in the release.
MicroStrategy may technically be in the business of enterprise software and cloud-based services, but Saylor has said the publicly traded company doubles as the first and only bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund in the U.S.
“We’re kind of like your nonexistent spot ETF,” Saylor told CNBC on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami.
