Snap Inc. appointed Lara Sweet, its current chief accounting officer, as its interim chief financial officer on Monday, a week before the Snapchat parent company is set to report its fourth quarter financial results.
Sweet’s appointment comes a few weeks after current CFO Tim Stone announced he’d be leaving the company, less than a year after coming over from Amazon. Stone’s last day, Feb. 5, will coincide with the company’s Q4 earnings report, according to a Snap filing with the SEC on Monday.
Sweet has been with Snap since 2016 and previously served as chief accounting officer at AOL. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, in a statement that accompanied the filing, said that Sweet has “intricate knowledge of our financial procedures and controls,” before adding the company would continue searching for a permanent CFO.
Sweet takes the job ahead of a critical Q4 report from Snap. The company posted its best sales quarter ever during Q3, Stone’s first full quarter with the company, reporting $298 million in revenue. But those gains on the business side were offset by the company losing 2 million daily users, as Snap struggles to rebound from a much-maligned app redesign last year and Instagram’s continued push to eat away at its core audience.
Snap’s investors have felt the pain in the last year as well. Snap’s stock, after briefly climbing above $20 per share in early Feb. 2018, has since dropped 70 percent, hitting $6.34 per share on Monday.
Looking to win back users, Snapchat is considering moving away from its trademark ephemeral messaging and allowing some snaps to be permanently displayed, according to a report from Reuters on Monday.