SAS names new head of its efforts to go public
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The entrance to SAS Institute in Cary. Photo: SAS
SAS Institute, the Cary-based data and analytics company, has named a veteran of the company to be its new chief operating officer and guide its preparations to go public and sell shares of the company.
Why it matters: SAS, founded in 1976, is one of the Triangle's largest technology companies, with around 4,000 employees based out of its Cary headquarters.
- The company's founder and CEO Jim Goodnight, 82 and the state's richest resident, has long kept the company privately held, but in 2021 he announced the goal of taking the company public.
Driving the news: On Thursday, the company named Gavin Day, a 25-year veteran, as its new COO, overseeing the company's global sales and getting it ready for the financial rigors of being a publicly-traded company.
- He is the first chief operating officer to be named at the company since the departure of former COO Oliver Schabenberger, who was long considered an heir apparent to Goodnight but left the company in 2020.
State of play: It remains unclear when SAS plans to go public — an event that could potentially give the company's employees equity.
- The company originally aimed for 2024, before saying 2025 was a more realistic target. But the uncertainty that exists in the market right now could delay those plans further.
What they're saying: "Timing is something that we have the luxury of," Day, a former executive vice president at SAS, told reporters. "We are a no debt company. We do not need capital, we do not have to pay back investors, so we absolutely have the patience to wait ... [for] when the time is right."
- Day said that he has already been working internally to get SAS operating as a public company would, which comes with different reporting requirements and many different kinds of disclosures.
He said that options for giving employees equity in an initial public offering have been presented to Goodnight. "When the time comes, Dr. Goodnight will talk to the employees and to the public and to the media about that," he said.
- Goodnight also has a succession plan in place, but "he will be the one to communicate that when the time is appropriate," he said in response to a question about whether the new role makes him the No. 2 at the company.
Zoom in: Day joined SAS in 2000, when it acquired a startup he worked at called DataFlux.
- He has worked in a variety of roles at SAS, which he says allows him to have a better perspective of the variety of roles across the company, from sales and consulting to research and development.