The tough questions began at about six in the morning, eastern time, on May 7th, just a few hours after the announcement. What does this mean? Why now? Is there more to follow? The press release was from Vancouver’s Avigilon and the news was that its CFO, Brad Bardua was leaving the company for health reasons.

Taken by itself, this would have raised eyebrows, nothing more. But the fact that the news fell on the same day the company was to report its Q1, 2014 results turned Avigilon’s stock upside down.

The Financial Post noted that Bardua was the third executive to leave the company in six months. By the time the dust had settled, about a third of Avigilon’s market cap had been erased and several analysts had cut their price targets on the stock.

The maelstrom also obscured the fact that the company’s first quarter results were, in fact, quite strong. At Cantech Letter, they fielded numerous calls from the street in the days following the results and passed the most common of these onto the company’s founder and CEO Alexander Fernandes, who agreed to tackle them head on.

Fernandes: “We have a corporate culture that is driven by an entrepreneurial spirit. Due to the rapid growth of our business, we do have a high-performance culture.”

Alex, you posted another quarter that beat the street’s expectations recently, but that was overshadowed by the resignation of CFO Brad Bardua. One analyst lowered his target price on Avigilon because of “uncertainty” around management, even though you beat his target on both the top and bottom line. Is this kind of uncertainty really a reason for your stock to fall by a third? [Read the complete interview…]