A No. 23 Dodgers jersey that once belonged to Kirk Gibson is framed on the office wall of Axonics CEO Raymond Cohen.
“Why not? One of the heroes of the game,” said Cohen of Gibson, whose famous 1988 World Series home run helped propel the Dodgers past the heavily-favored Oakland A’s that year.
Axonics has its own David vs. Goliath battle underway, a legal skirmish with device making giant Medtronic; see Peter J. Brennan’s page 26 story for some thought on the $164B-valued firm (NYSE: MDT) from Cohen.
Cohen tells Brennan that since he’s in Orange County, he’s also an Angels fan because “I don’t want rocks thrown at me!”
Wall Street certainly isn’t throwing rocks at Axonics. Since it went public on Halloween in 2018, its market cap has soared tenfold to $3 billion. The device maker’s revenue ballooned 4,509% in the past two years, making it by far No. 1 on the Business Journal’s annual list of fastest-growing publicly traded companies, which starts on p. 32.
Laguna Beach’s Sheldon Razin, founder in 1974 of what’s now NextGen Healthcare Inc. (Nasdaq: NXGN), gracefully conceded defeat after losing a bitter proxy battle earlier this month.
“I am proud of the growth and market expansion that the company has achieved and wish NextGen Healthcare’s Board of Directors and management team success going forward,” the 83-year-old said in a statement.
Even though Razin’s the largest single shareholder of the medical practice-focused software company with a 15.2% stake worth about $150 million, his slate of directors only got about 20% of the votes.
Shares were little changed in the week following the Oct. 13 vote. NextGen, which moved its headquarters from Irvine to Atlanta earlier this year but still has operations here, is valued around $1 billion.
Rivian isn’t the only local company aiming to go public with a youthful exec team, though the EV maker is the largest of the bunch.
Noah Kerner, CEO of fellow Irvine upstart Acorns Grow, in recent years has made his share of execs-under-40 lists. The fintech is expected to go public via a reverse-merger with a SPAC, with a valuation around $2 billion.
Tim Vanderhook, who turned 40 on Valentine’s Day, heads Viant Technology Inc., the Irvine-based ad tech company that went public earlier this year (Nasdaq: DSP) and now sports a nearly $800 million valuation.
Experience has served insurance firm Mercury General Corp. (NYSE: MCY) well. The L.A.-based firm, with its base of operations largely run out of Brea, counts founder George Joseph as its chairman.
Joseph turned 100 in September, and is believed to be the oldest chair of a large public company.
Mercury’s shares are up nearly 40% over the past year; the company is valued around $3.1 billion.
See pages 1 and 48 for details on Rivian’s exec team and board of directors.
