The DroneShield Ltd (ASX: DRO) share price was crunched 19% today after it announced its US CEO had resigned.
DroneShield says that it provides artificial intelligence (AI) based platforms for protection against advanced threats such as drones and autonomous systems. It offers customers “bespoke” counterdrone (or counter-UAS) and electronic warfare solutions and off-the-shelf products designed to suit a variety of terrestrial, water-based or airborne platforms.
Its customers include the military, the intelligence community, government, law enforcement, critical infrastructure and airporters.
DroneShield CEO resigns
The ASX defence share told the market that its US chief executive officer Matt McCrann had resigned from the business, effective immediately.
McCrann had been the US CEO since 2022 and he had been with the business since 2019.
The DroneShield CEO Oleg Vornik was quoted in the ASX announcement in response to this news as saying:
DroneShield thanks Matt for his contribution to the business and wishes Matt well for his next steps. Our U.S. business includes talented, highly experienced personnel, with our counterdrone systems deployed with a number of tier 1 U.S. Government agencies. The U.S. represents a very important market for DroneShield, that is anticipated to grow across both military and civilian domains, as drones continue to pose an increasing threat.
The company highlighted that it has been scaling up its US presence, including running a process to set up a US product assembly operation, recently appointing a “highly experienced US advisory board” and growing the size of the team to 35 (out of a total of approximately 440 globally).
What else has happened?
This announcement has come soon after CEO Vornik sold all of his shares, along with sales by other members of the DroneShield leadership team.
DroneShield defended that move by noting a substantial number of key DroneShield team members receive performance options as part of their compensation.
It said the sales of DroneShield shares were “unrelated to the growth trajectory of the company, which remains strong” as reported in the company’s recent quarterly market update which reflected record quarter over quarter growth and positive operating cashflow.
The ASX defence share said the directors have “retained a stake in the company through vested options as they have done in the past when disposing of shares acquired on exercise of options.”
DroneShield said the board and executives of the company remain “fully committed to the success of the company.”
The AFR also reported in an article that DroneShield’s main weapon is being “superseded on the battlefield” in Ukraine as soldiers change tactics.
Final thoughts on the DroneShield share price
The DroneShield share price has now fallen 70% since 9 October 2025, which is a huge decline. Despite that, it’s still up 160% for the year.
Large share sales by management don’t normally increase confidence in a business, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens next and what commentary the business provides.
The company continues to win new contracts, but it’s hard to gauge what good value is with this business, so I’ll stick to investing in other ASX growth shares while watching the developments.
