Online pharmacy Healthwarehouse.com has a new CEO, the company’s third in less than a year.
Healthwarehouse.com, an online pharmacy targeting consumers with high copays and health insurance deductibles looking for the lowest-priced generic prescription drugs, last week appointed Joseph Peters as interim president and chief executive officer.
He replaced interim chief operating officer and CEO John Pauly who resigned March 31, the company says in a series of personnel memos filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Peters will serve as interim CEO until a permanent top executive is named, the company says in its filing. He joined Healthwarehouse.com in 2012 as a customer support manager, later served as human resources manager and has been vice president of operations since 2014.
The company’s last non-interim CEO was Jeff Holtmeir, who assumed the job in January following a months-long proxy fight to oust the company’s founder and long-term CEO Lalit Dhaphale, according to SEC filings.
Dhaphale founded the company in 2007 and resigned in October. Healthwarehouse.com has yet to release any public statements other than regulatory filings about the constant change in top leadership or when the company expects to name a full-time CEO.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For the last nine months the company’s founder, board members and majority owners have had vigorous discussions about the company’s financial situation, accounting practices and falling stock price, according to the company’s latest annual report. In the past year the value of a share of Healthwarehouse.com stock has dropped about 56% and was trading at about 18 cents a share as of this morning, according to MarketWatch.com.
For the year ended Dec. 31, Healthwarehouse.com posted a hefty gain in sales but a much higher net loss:
- Net sales in 2016 increased 46.5% to about $10.4 million from $7.1 million in 2015, and 61.7% to $2.9 million in the fourth quarter from $1.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2015.
- Net loss for 2016 was about $1.3 million compared with $626,682 in 2015. Healthwarehouse.com posted a net loss of $96,944 in the fourth quarter compared with $183,609 in the fourth quarter of 2015.
- Total orders increased year over year 78.5% to 268,334 orders from 150,322.
On Friday, Healthwarehouse.com also notified the SEC the company will cease filing various required forms because its securities no longer fall under certain filing requirements.
Healthwarehouse.com didn’t issue any public statements about its filing. The notification, known as form 15, may mean that a company is ceasing to exist in a publicly-traded form, either returning to privately-held status or going out of business altogether, according to Investopedia.com. The form may also mean that a company is simply canceling a certain class of securities and replacing them with another class, says Investopedia.
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