Dive Brief:
- Flywire Chief Financial Officer Michael Ellis will leave the company next year, according to a Tuesday press release detailing the company’s second-quarter earnings results.
- “In conversations with Mike Ellis over the past year we have come to a mutual understanding that the next phase of growth for Flywire needs new leadership in the Finance, Global Treasury & Public Markets area,” a Flywire spokesperson said in a Wednesday email. “Mike Ellis has been incredible in helping us get to where we are in the past 8 years and has committed to helping us successfully transition as we look for his successor.”
- Ellis did not provide details of his post-Flywire plans during the Q2 earnings call. Prior to taking the CFO post at Flywire, Ellis served as CFO of gift card company CashStar for nearly six years, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Dive Insight:
“We thank [Ellis] for all he’s done to create our financial foundation,” said CEO Mike Massaro in the release. “As we initiate the search for his successor, it will be business as usual for Flywire and Mike Ellis will be staying on in the interim to ensure a smooth transition in 2024.”
The transition comes as the Boston-based company looks to grow through acquisitions. At an investor conference in May, Massaro had talked about the deals the company was looking to make, saying Flywire was looking for acquisitions of all sizes. He classified small deals at $40 million to $150 million, medium deals at $500 million to $600 million and large deals as anything above that.
The company has yet to announce any deals this year. Merger and acquisition activity was expected to rise in the payments sector this year, although deal activity in the first half of the year remained stifled. Massaro had identified Latin America as a region where Flywire would invest for growth. The company had fewer than 10 employees in the region as of June.
Last month, Flywire partnered with China-based Tencent, the parent company of messaging app WeChat. The partnership was expected to bolster the roughly 70% of Flywire’s revenue that comes from education payments, and give the company access to the roughly 300,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S.
Flywire reported a loss of $16.8 million in the second quarter, a 29% improvement from the same quarter last year. Revenue jumped 50.3% to $84.9 million over the same period.
