Dive Brief:
- Amy Reeves, CFO of smart window manufacturer View, will resign from her position at the company effective Feb. 1, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Reeves joined the Milpitas, California-based company in 2021 as its VP and principal accounting officer, responsible for controllership functions as well as SEC financial reporting, before moving to the CFO chair in February 2022, according to her LinkedIn profile. She will “continue to serve the company as an independent consultant as requested by the company from time to time,” according to the SEC filing.
- View did not respond to requests for comment on the company’s plans for its CFO seat.
Dive Insight:
Once an investor darling touting promises to “disrupt” its industry, View offers smart window products that use artificial intelligence technology to help control room temperature, glare and other elements.
Reeves’ resignation comes after a rocky few years for the smart window manufacturer following high hopes for the business, with the company receiving a $1.1 billion investment from the coveted SoftBank Vision Fund in 2018 — which came following previous influxes of about $800 million capital from other investors, according to a 2020 report by TechCrunch.
However, cracks began to show in the company after it went public in 2021 via a special purpose acquisition company merger, with View Inc. conducting multiple rounds of layoffs and seeing its stock price plummet amid reports of fraud.
Last July, the SEC settled charges against View Inc for failing to disclose $28 million in warranty liabilities related to a defect in its windows, CFO Dive previously reported. View was not required to pay civil penalties because it self-reported the fraud, but the SEC also brought charges against View’s former CFO, Vidul Prakash, for failure to ensure the liabilities were properly disclosed.
Prakash served as View’s CFO for a two year period between March 2019 and November 2021. In September, he filed a motion to dismiss the suit, alleging that the SEC’s charges fail to prove that he acted negligently, according to court documents. The case is still pending in the U.S. Northern District of California Court.
The fraud allegations rattled already uneasy investors, with one claiming that View “never should have been a public company,” according to a July 2023 Forbes report.
Since late last summer, View has struggled to reverse its fortunes and cut spending in order to keep itself afloat. The company announced a $50 million financing deal with real estate investors in October, including Cantor Fitzgerald, RXR, Anson and Affinus, which followed after a declaration that View did not have the cash reserves on hand to continue operating beyond September 2023 in its Q2 2023 earnings results published in August.
However, that funding only reset the clock; with the $50 million investment, View’s cash and cash equivalents “will be sufficient to fund its anticipated operating costs and obligations into, but not beyond, the first quarter of 2024,” it said in its Q3 2023 earnings report released in November.
“To address our cash needs, we continue to seek additional sources of capital,” View said in its earnings release. “While the Company has raised sufficient capital to fund operations in the past, there can be no assurance that the necessary additional financing will be available on terms acceptable to the Company, or at all.”
View ended its third quarter with $51 million in cash and cash equivalents, compared to $95.5 million in the prior year period.
