DroneShield’s US CEO resigns

DroneShield announced that its US CEO Matt McCrann has resigned from the business, effective immediately. McCrann joined the business in 2019 and was the US CEO since 2022. The counter-drone firm has faced increased scrutiny after its CEO in Australia and two other executives offloaded their stakes in the company, just days after cashing in shares from performance options, according to media reports. The rapid divestment spooked investors already skeptical about DroneShield’s sky-high valuation, sending the stock tumbling more than 40% this month. Oleg Vornik, DroneShield CEO, said: “DroneShield thanks Matt for his contribution to the business and wishes Matt well for his next steps. Our U.S. business includes talented, highly experienced personnel, with our counterdrone systems deployed with a number of tier 1 US government agencies. The US represents a very important market for DroneShield, that is anticipated to grow across both military and civilian domains, as drones continue to pose an increasing threat.” DroneShield said it has been recently scaling up its US presence, including running a process to set up a US product assembly operation, recently appointing a highly experienced US  Advisory Board, and growing the size of the team (currently 35 employees out of approximately 440 globally). DroneShield recently had to retract a statement to the ASX about a new sales contract in the US after management realised the contract had already previously been announced. As the company said at the time: “The November contracts were inadvertently marked as new contracts rather than revised contracts due to an administrative error. DroneShield is taking steps to prevent this error from reoccurring.” For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Kym Bergmann at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Group Sales Director Simon Hadfield at [email protected]