By Tina Bellon
(Reuters) – TuSimple Holdings Inc on Thursday said it was replacing its Chief Executive Officer in a decision it called part of a “planned executive succession,” but which took Wall Street by surprise and caused its shares to plummet more than 20%.
The self-driving trucking company said Xiaodi Hou, up until now TuSimple’s chief technology officer, will replace Cheng Lu as chief executive and president effective immediately.
Shares slid 23% following the announcement to $13, significantly below their $40 initial public offering price in April 2021.
Lu had been at the helm of the self-driving company since 2018 and led TuSimple during its IPO. He will serve as an adviser to the new CEO until March 2023 to ensure an effective transition, a time during which he will receive an annual salary of $450,000, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Hou, 37, is a co-founder of TuSimple and received a PhD from the California Institute of Technology.
“This is part of a planned executive succession as the company moves to its next phase of commercializing … autonomous trucking technology,” TuSimple said in a statement.
TuSimple’s executive team had not mentioned plans for an executive succession during any of the company’s last four public earnings calls.
TuSimple is part of a growing field of companies working to commercialize self-driving trucks at a time when the United States and other countries struggle with a supply chain crunch and a shortage of truck drivers.
(Reporting by Tina Bellon in Austin, Texas; Editing by Bernard Orr)
