HP Veteran to Replace CEO of Israel-Based Industrial Printer Company Kornit

HP veteran Ronen Samuel will replace Kornit Digital Ltd.’s CEO Gabi Seligsohn who will step down August 1, the company announced Monday. Following the announcement, Kornit’s stock dropped 2.58% to $17 by the end of trade Monday.

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Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Rosh HaAyin, a town in central Israel, Nasdaq-listed Kornit manufactures industrial inkjet printers for the garment industry, as well as pigmented ink and related chemical products. The company went public in 2015, raising $71 million on a $305 million valuation. The company reported revenue of $31.1 million for the first quarter of 2018, up 14.8% from the year before. Mr. Seligsohn has been CEO of Kornit since 2014 and will remain on the company’s board of directors, the company said in a statement. Prior to joining Kornit, Mr. Seligsohn served as president and CEO of Nasdaq-listed meteorology company Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd.

For the past 4 years, after holding various positions at HP since 2006, Mr. Samuel has headed HP Indigo, an Israel-based digital offset printer company, which was acquired by HP in 2001 and has since operated as a division of the multinational computer and printer company. Last year, Kornit signed a deal to supply Amazon with industrial printers intended for Merch, a T-shirt manufacturing and distribution service by Amazon that lets users offer their own designs and collect royalties from sales. As part of the deal, Amazon was given a five-year warrant to acquire up to about 2.9 million of Kornit’s common shares at $13.03 per share. Per the agreement, vesting is dependent on payments made by Amazon for the purchase of goods and services from Kornit. The deal is yet to be actualized.

In a September filing, Kornit reported it anticipated a revenue shortfall of $7 million to $10 million caused by a single customer that is unable to receive a scheduled delivery of a large number of products due to unforeseen regulatory delays.