Snapchat loses another exec as the price of the action falls

Snapchat loses another leader and Wall Street loses patience.

Imran Khan, Snapchat's strategy director, has announced his intention to leave the company, according to a regulatory filing on Monday. Khan, former analyst at Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase, joined Snapchat (BREAK) in January 2015.

The company said in the SEC filing that Khan will stay for an interim period and that he will not leave Snapchat because of disagreements with other leaders.

But Khan joins a growing list of executives who have fled Snapchat in the past year. Chief Financial Officer Drew Vollero left in May and was replaced by Tim Stone, a former Amazon (AMZN) executive.

Product Vice President Tom Conrad said in January that he was leaving. And Snapchat's engineering guru, Stuart Bowers, retired in May to join You're here (TSLA), a company that has its own problems in the ranks of management.

Snapchat has not had a chief operating officer since Emily White left the company in 2015.

The turmoil of management has nervous investors.

Shares of the parent company Snapchat Snap Inc. (BREAK) fell more than 2% on Monday and is now trading at a single digit. The stock hit its all-time low last week and dropped more than 40% from the original bid price of $ 17 last year.

Evan Spiegel, CEO and co-founder of Snapchat, said Monday that Khan "was an excellent partner in building our business" and that the company wishes him the best.

Khan added that there is "a stellar management team in place to guide Snap in the next chapter".

But investors clearly disagree. The company recently announced its first-ever drop in daily users, another sign that the controversial overhaul of the app and intense competition Facebook (FB)Instagram, owner of Snapchat, hurts Snapchat.

Another problem that concerns Snapchat is that investors must trust Spiegel and his co-founder, Bobby Murphy, who is also the technical director of the company.

Indeed, Snapchat shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange have no voting rights, which is very unusual. Several large technology companies grant the founders supervisory rights. But Snapchat's voting shares are almost entirely owned by Spiegel and Murphy.

It seems that Snapchat needs its equivalent of Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, or former Google president and CEO Eric Schmidt, who commands respect from Silicon Valley technicians and Wall Street financial guys. .

Khan's departure will not help change the perception that Snapchat's executives, like many of its younger users, may be a bit too green.

CNNMoney (New York) First published on September 10, 2018: 11:34 ET