Barry Edinburg, chief financial officer for Sunlight Financial Holdings Inc. for the last six years, will step down from that role tomorrow. Rodney Yoder, a longtime veteran in the finance industry, will take over on April 1.
Edinburg, who lives in New York, joined Sunlight Financial (NYSE: SUNL) two years after its founding in 2014. He is credited with raising several rounds of capital in its early, startup phase as a private company. He built out the company’s financial operations from scratch, formed partnerships with more than nine capital providers and was instrumental in developing the capital-light, cash-generating financing for the company.
He was a key part of the team that took the company public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company last summer.
“I've decided to step down as chief financial officer of the company,” said Edinburg on Sunlight’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2021 earnings call yesterday evening. “In order to support a seamless transition, however, I have agreed to serve as an advisor to the business through the end of the third quarter.”
CEO Matt Protere told Edinburg on the call “it's been an absolute pleasure building this company with you, and we'll miss the value you brought to our business every day on behalf of the board and all of our Sunlight teammates.”
Yoder was most recently director of financial analysis and strategy for Barclaycard, where he'd worked for 12 years. Before that, he was with Swift Financial for three years and also spent 16 years with Bank of America Corp. and MBNA, which was acquired by BofA in 2006.
“I've had the pleasure of working with Rodney at both MBNA and Swift Financial,” Protere said. “He's a seasoned finance executive with significant experience in financial analysis, consumer credit, MMA (Money Market Accounts) and strategic decision-making.”
Yoder's experience with depository institutions will be particularly helpful for Sunlight, as it relies on those banks for much of its credit financing.
Yesterday's earnings call was the last for Edinburg as Sunlight CFO.
“I really appreciate the partnership with Matt and all of my teammates at Sunlight and believe that we've established a unique platform whose capital-light, cash-generating financing model will continue to drive success of the business in the coming years,” he said.
"I really think it's an appropriate time to take a step back," he told an analyst when asked why he was stepping down now. "And it's completely natural at this point to bring in some new leadership to the company to help drive the next phase of growth."
Sunlight, headquartered in Charlotte and New York, provides credit for the installation of residential solar projects and home improvements. It partners with contractors to provide point-of-sale financing to their customers through its proprietary technology.
