Marrone Bio Innovations founder retiring as CEO, Davis-based company says
Davis-based Marrone Bio Innovations announced Monday that its founder, Dr. Pamela Marrone, would soon retire as chief executive officer.
Marrone will stay with the biotech company until a new CEO is brought on, the company said in a news release Monday. Following the transition, she will remain on the company’s board of directors as a non-executive member and will serve as a consultant.
The decision to step away from her day-to-day duties comes after 30 years of creating and managing firms in Davis on the cutting edge of agricultural science – replacing traditional chemical fertilizers and pest controls for biologic solutions – while leading her namesake firm through an accounting scandal that threatened to destroy it.
“After 14 years as CEO, this is an ideal time for me to serve Marrone Bio in a different, advisory capacity as the company enters its next phase of growth and drives meaningful, long-term shareholder value,” Marrone said in a prepared statement. “We’ve successfully brought science-based biological solutions to farmers and changed the perception of the entire biological category.”
Founded in 2006 and specializing in environmentally conscious pesticides and other farm products, Marrone Bio Innovations has faced ups and downs since its initial public offering in August 2013, which raised millions from investors.
This August, Marrone bought Finnish agriculture firm Pro Farm for $31.8 million. Two months later, Marrone’s former chief operating officer, Hector Absi, pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy in connection with a scheme to inflate the company’s reported revenues.
Shortly after Absi departed from Marrone Bio Innovations in 2014, the company initiated an internal investigation into its reported earnings, finding $6.7 million in over-reported revenues over an 18-month period.”
Speaking with The Sacramento Bee in 2017, Marrone said the company spent “$17 million on lawyer fees and auditor fees and the SEC fine of $1.75 million.” The settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and subsequent lawsuits from shareholders ate into finances, resulting in the company cutting its workforce in half in 2015 to 84 employees from 161 just two years before, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.
“It’s really such a shame that money couldn’t be used to expand our company,” she said. “Fortunately, our largest shareholder lent us $40 million.”
In that interview, Marrone attributed her company’s revenue growth to its “coming of age” technology, which she said provides good return on investment to growers.
The company’s general counsel, Linda Moore, said this October that Marrone’s business has rebuilt over the past few years: revenue grew from $18.2 million in 2017 to $21.2 million last year, while losses shrank from $30.9 million to $20.2 million.
It’s current headcount, according to the Business Journal, was 113 employees.
Marrone, 63, developed her fascination with ecofriendly science at an early age, according to previous Bee reporting. She vividly recalled the time her father bought a traditional chemical pesticide to deal with an infestation of gypsy moths.
“It killed everything besides the gypsy moths – lady beetles, lacewings, honeybees – and my mom was furious,” she said.
After earning undergraduate and graduate entomology degrees, Marrone worked in St. Louis before moving to Davis in 1990 to start a biotech subsidary for pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. A few years later, she founded a company called AgraQuest that made environmentally safe pesticides and fungicides.
She launched Marrone Bio after being forced out of AgraQuest in a power play by the company’s investors. That company went on to be sold for $425 million in 2012 to Bayer CropScience.
This story was originally published December 2, 2019 at 2:08 PM.
