By Stuart Condie


SYDNEY--Shares in Xero Ltd. hit their lowest level since March 2020 after the cloud-accounting software provider said that chief executive Steve Vamos will retire in January.

Shares in Xero were 11% lower at A$64.72, wiping almost 1.1 billion Australian dollars (US$707.5 million) from Xero's market capitalization. They earlier hit A$62.85, a level last touched when the Covid-19 pandemic was roiling global markets.

The stock was the worst-performing component of Australia's S&P/ASX 200 index after about an hour of trade on Thursday after Xero said that Mr. Vamos would retire after five years at the helm. Former Google executive and StubHub president Sukhinder Singh Cassidy will become CEO on Feb. 1 and Mr. Vamos will remain an adviser until the end of May, Xero said.

Xero also announced a loss of 16.1 million New Zealand dollars (US$9.5 million) for the six months through September. It had a loss of NZ$5.9 million in the same period a year earlier.

The company said its bottom line was weighed by NZ$26.5 million in noncash impairments and disposals. It reported an 11% lift in first-half earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization to NZ$108.6 million.

Revenue and subscriber growth were broadly in-line with expectations, RBC Capital Markets analyst Garry Sherriff said in a note. Regional performances were mixed, said Mr. Sherriff, who added that his concerns about lower-than-anticipated Ebitda were largely assuaged by Xero's reiterated FY operating-cost guidance.


Write to Stuart Condie at stuart.condie@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

11-09-22 1950ET