From Xero to $95m for boss Drury
Thirty-odd years ago, Rod Drury was a Napier Boys’ High School student with an interest in computer coding. As of yesterday, he is almost $95 million richer after selling part of his stake in Xero, the Wellington-based cloud accounting firm he founded in 2006.
Drury, 50, has no plans to give up his role as chief executive of the company and, despite selling three million of his shares, he still owns about 13 per cent of it.
He has indicated some of his windfall will go towards ‘‘a range of philanthropic and social endeavours’’ but, unlike fellow start-up investor Gareth Morgan, he has no interest in entering politics.
‘‘There are no political plans. Xero remains Rod’s focus,’’ a company spokeswoman said.
Drury once advised early investors in Xero to put their shares ‘‘in the bottom drawer and forget about them’’.
This is third time he has raided his bottom drawer, having previously sold Xero shares in smaller parcels.
In 2015, he cashed in a million shares for $20m. Three years earlier, he banked about $5m from the sale of 833,000 shares.
When he started Xero, the company consisted of four people working in one room. It now employs more than 1800 staff in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States.
Yet, for all its growth and sharemarket success, it has not paid a dividend in any of the 11 years of its existence.
The markets’ support for the company is due in no small part to Drury himself, and how he has delivered on his vision for the company, which has amassed more than 1.2 million customers, and is valued at just over $4.4 billion.
He made his initial fortune from a software development firm called Glazier Systems, which he sold in 1999. He added to that by establishing and selling an email technology company called Aftermail, which he set up in 2003.
Not bad for someone who started out as a programming nerd back at Napier Boys’ High in the 1980s. And someone who overcame a stutter earlier in his career to become an effective showman and salesman for both Xero and the broader benefits of technology to the New Zealand economy.
‘‘More than anyone else I’ve ever met, Rod is a guy who had a clear vision of what he wanted his life to be like and planned to make that happen,’’ friend and former business partner Andy Lark told the Sunday Star-Times in 2014.
Not only was Drury determined to build a big listed company, he wanted to do it while continuing to live in Hawke’s Bay, where his three children could go to school, and he could go mountain biking and paddle boarding.
These days, he’s more likely to be found on an exercise bike, where he has been known to take calls from journalists as he works out.
Xero shares were trading down 2 per cent at $32.31 in earlyafternoon trading yesterday after the Drury selloff announcement, valuing his remaining stake at $571m.