Fluence CEO Julian Nebreda and CFO Ahmed Pasha leave; Axel Meier steps in as interim CEO
Victoria Shinder1 min readFluence, the Nasdaq-listed battery storage technology company, announced on 2 November that its chief executive Julian Nebreda and chief financial officer Ahmed Pasha have left with immediate effect. Axel Meier becomes interim CEO and Ricardo Roizen interim CFO. John Zahurancik, senior vice-president, chief customer success officer and one of Fluence's founding team, is also stepping down; his replacement is Herman Boos.
The interim leaders come from the company's two founding shareholders. Meier was until recently CFO of Siemens Smart Infrastructure and has sat on the Fluence board since 2020. Roizen was CFO of AES Andes, AES Corporation's Latin American subsidiary. Chief operating officer Bernerd de Santos will lead what the company calls an "operational transformation", and a new Manufacturing and Operations Oversight Committee has been set up.
The announcement pointed to a $6.4 billion backlog. But in its fiscal third-quarter results in August, Fluence said revenue was about $90 million below expectations because of delays in ramping up US manufacturing, and adjusted EBITDA was minus $29.3 million. Just over a month later it cut its fiscal 2026 guidance by around $600 million. In a call with analysts in mid-September, Nebreda described problems at the Houston plant that assembles HVAC and thermal management systems, including an automated welding process "operating significantly below its targeted level".
Fluence's next results are due on 23 November.
What it means
The change puts manufacturing execution, not demand, at the centre of the story: the backlog is there, the factory is not delivering it. The 23 November results will be the first chance to see whether the new team resets the guidance again.