It has been a huge year of change for Rod Drury, in both his business and personal lives.
On March 5, he delivered the surprise news that he was standing down as chief executive of Xero, the company he co-founded in 2006 and which remains the source of the bulk of his wealth.
At the same time, Drury confirmed to NBR that he had separated from his wife Anna. The Hawke’s Bay home recently built for the couple and their three children on a 4536sq m section was put on the market for a reported $5 million.
He also has interests in a prized beachfront property at Waimarama, which he bought from Stefan Lepionka in 2013 for $4.175m.
The entrepreneur said while he would remain a director of Xero, he would not seek other directorships.
Mr Drury told NBR that he did not want to talk about his personal life but did say that it had no impact on his career decision. He said he had decided to step down because he did not have the right skills to lead Xero into its next phase of growth.
Earlier, in November 2017, he sold three million of his Xero shares for $94.5 million. It was a substantial transaction but still left him as the accounting software company’s largest single shareholder with 17.7 million shares, or 13% of the company.
Mr Drury said funds from the sale will lay the foundation for his future plans for philanthropic and social endeavours.
Since March, the entrepreneur has kept a low profile by his standards, with public appearances parred back and a previously prolific social media presence scaled back to a handful of retweets.
The New Year saw Xero abandon its ASX/NZX dual listing to go ASX-only. Mr Drury, and his successor as chief executive, Steve Vamos, both maintained the move would boost liquidity and attract more and larger global investors.
Volume did pick up and Xero shares went on a bull run, hitting $A45.47 during June, an all-time high and nearly double its 12-month low. The run-up saw Xero’s market cap pushed to a fresh high of $A6.5 billion.
The bull run was helped by Xero being added to the ASX100 (at the expense of Fairfax) and a strong full-year result as customer numbers hit 1.3 million, revenue rose 38% to $406.6m and its net loss shrank from $69m to $28m. The company will still not give a target date for profitability but does say it will be able to get into the black before it requires another capital raise.
Before founding Xero, Drury successfully established and sold two companies: Glazier Systems, a software development company acquired for $7.5 million by Advantage Group in 1999 and which operates today as Intergen; and AfterMail, which was acquired by US Quest Software in 2006 in a $US45 million deal.