Yahoo Finance UiPath names former Google Cloud exec co-CEO to steer its future
UiPath, the RPA company that went public a year ago, was once hotter than hot in a space that was sizzling. Consider that it raised $750 million in February, 2021 at an astonishing $35 billion valuation. It went public a couple of months later to much fanfare, finishing its opening day of trading above that final valuation.
The future looked bright, but the reality of being a public company has proven challenging. Today, its market cap sits at under $10 billion, a precipitous drop from its final private valuation. The 52 week high for the stock price was $90.00 per share, the low was $17.66 and the stock is up over 2% on the news to $18.61 this afternoon.
Perhaps that's why the company has turned to a seasoned professional for help, announcing today that it was bringing in Rob Enslin, most recently the president of sales at Google Cloud to share CEO duties with founder and current CEO Daniel Dines.
Enslin has been around the enterprise for several decades. Prior to joining Google, he spent 27 years at SAP with his last title being president of the cloud business group and executive board member. He helped turn Google Cloud around with the company reaching 10% market share, the first time the company has reached double digit market share, under his leadership, growing revenue, while giving Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian seasoned leadership in the sales group.
Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, sees this hire as a big win for UiPath. "A great hire by UiPath with a CEO who has every major CEO and CIO in his rolodex. This is exactly the way to go for UiPath now: from the top, as a business acceleration tool," he said.
While UiPath has struggled in the public markets, it is still a substantial business. The company is predicting revenue of between $223 and $225 million for the first quarter of FY2023 with total projected revenue expected to pass $1 billion in 2023. The total addressable market is $60 billion, according to the company.
Perhaps Enslin's leadership experience, especially in enterprise sales, can help right the ship. Dines believes the co-CEO role, which we've seen at SAP, Oracle and Salesforce, can work at a critical time in the company's evolution.
"As my co-CEO, Rob will focus on scaling our business. This will allow me to concentrate on our company culture, vision and product innovation. These are the areas I’ve been the most passionate about since we founded UiPath, and where I can ensure that we build a company where you want to come to work every day and that delivers the greatest value to our customers," Dines wrote in an email to employees that was shared in a blog post announcing Enslin's hire.
As for Enslin, it was a huge opportunity to guide a company with a tremendous amount of potential. "I firmly believe that there’s a huge opportunity to reinvent how business is done and that digital technology should be at the center of the new way of working. I’m committed to helping UiPath build on its momentum as we look ahead to the company’s next phase of growth," he said in a statement.
While his LinkedIn profile shows him starting at UiPath this month, the official start day is May 16. Enslin has a tremendous challenge in front of him, but if his experience at Google Cloud is any indication, he has a unique skill to set UiPath on the right path.
