Struggling Snap Shares Fall Again After Top Business Exec Departs Company

GettyImages-188019681 — Snapchat's top business executive left the company. Logo of Snapchat is seen at the front entrance new headquarters of Snapchat , the popular social network startup that lets users send each other photos that quickly disappear, November 14, 2013 in Venice, California. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Shares of Snap, Inc. (SNAP), the parent company of Snapchat, traded in single digits last week for the first time in the company's history. On Monday morning, Snap's shares dropped by 2.27 percent after the company announced that chief strategy officer Imran Khan would leave the company.

Khan told the company about his departure on Thursday, according to a Snap SEC filing. He will stay with Snap for an interim period until his final day, which has yet to be determined. CEO Evan Spiegel sent Khan well wishes in a statement that was included with the filing.

“Imran has been a great partner building our business. We appreciate all of his hard work and wish him the best,” Spiegel said.

The 41-year-old executive will start an investment firm for tech companies, according to Bloomberg. He was the latest in a series of company executives to leave Snap since the company’s IPO in March 2017. Khan had been with the company for three years.

Shares of Snap were trading at $9.71 per share, in early market hours on Monday.

Khan expressed optimism in Snap’s future in his departing statements.

“There is never a perfect time to say goodbye, but we have a stellar leadership team in place to guide Snap through the next chapter, and I plan to stay on to ensure a very smooth transition,” Khan said in the SEC filing.

It has been a difficult year for Snap, as Snapchat has had trouble maintaining its once-booming youth audience, especially in the aftermath of a controversial app redesign at the end of last year.

"The company has struggled - commercially and in terms of users and usage - relative to earlier much more optimistic expectations that were widely held," Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser told Reuters.

In its last earnings report, Snap revealed the app lost 3 million daily active users in the second quarter of 2018, from 191 million to 188 million. Snapchat has struggled to maintain pace with rival Instagram, as Instagram now has significantly more active users than Snapchat.