Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) CEO, Jay Flatley, has announced that he would be stepping down from his position at the company. Instead, he would now be the Executive Chairman of the board of directors at Illumina. The company is known as the largest manufacturer of DNA sequencing machines, which have contributed immensely to the development of new drugs and furthered biological studies. Flatley would be replaced by another executive, Francis deSouza, who many had anticipated to be Flatley’s heir.
The change in leadership would be effective from July 5, 2016. Francis would assume both roles, that of president and CEO. Flatley has been instrumental in his tenure as CEO of ILMN. He took over the reins of the company in 1999, when the company had just $500,000 in annual revenues. However, under Flatley, the company has grown and reported $2.2 billion in annual revenues 2015. The growth included several acquisitions under Flatley’s tenure, as well as organic growth inside the company.
About his successor, Flatley stated that Francis is an exceptional leader and has a proven track record of implementing growth strategies, in complex environments. He also assured that he would work closely with new CEO to ensure that the company’s legacy of innovation continues. Francis had moved to Illumina, from Symantec, in 2013.
Flatley was also responsible for hiring most of the company’s current management and increasing the headcount at the company from just 30 to over 4,800. He is also lauded for making the process of human genome sequencing significantly cheaper. While most of ILMN’s competitors beat the company to making the process more efficient, they could not make it as cheap as Flatley had. The current cost of genome sequencing is $1,000, but had been over $100 million, when Flatley joined Illumina. His successor had demonstrated similar execution strategies, in the recent launch of HiSeq-4000 and MiniSeq devices.
Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) closed at a share price of $161.62, after having a trade volume of 1.32 million and gaining 3.51% during the March 7 session.
