Michael Nill plans to step down from his post as Cerner Corp.'s executive vice president and COO on Jan.10, the company disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Nill, who has worked at Cerner for 23 years, is the latest officer to step down from the electronic health record giant's leadership team in recent months.
Nill will continue to receive pay from Cerner for two years beginning in January, based on his annual base salary and his annual target cash bonus, among other factors. He will have to comply with Cerner's restrictive covenants, including a noncompete agreement.
Cerner also said that Jeff Townsend, the company's executive vice president and chief of innovation, retired on Friday after more than 30 years with the company.
Townsend on Friday transitioned to a role as an executive senior adviser, where he will primarily work on completing and transitioning his current responsibilities, according to Cerner's filing. The adviser role includes a base salary of $100,000 per year, with his initial term expiring in June 2020.
Joanne Burns, chief strategy officer at Cerner, also plans to step down from the company in early 2020, a Cerner spokesperson confirmed. He said the company did not have a comment to add on the departures disclosed in the filing.
Burns, Nill and Townsend join Julie Wilson, who retired from her role as Cerner's chief people officer in June after 24 years at the company.
"Going forward, as part of Cerner's positioning for the future, the company is looking to bolster the leadership team with an emphasis on cloud platform and transformation experience," Cerner wrote in the filing.
Cerner is in the midst of implementing a new operating model designed to improve efficiency and profitability, as part of an agreement it struck in April with Starboard Value, an activist investment fund that owns roughly 1% of the company's outstanding stock. That agreement also included a "board refreshment," changing more than half of the company's board since 2017.
Cerner's goal for the new operating model is to improve the company's adjusted operating margin through 165 cost-cutting, portfolio management and business simplification initiatives.
The company is expecting to surpass its targeted adjusted operating margin of 20% for the fourth quarter, Chief Financial Officer Marc Naughton said during a call with investment analysts on Oct. 24. Cerner's adjusted operating margin was 18.1% in the third quarter. The company posted net income of $81.9 million for the quarter, down 51.6% from $169.4 million in the prior-year period. Third-quarter revenue totaled $1.43 billion, up 6.7% from one year prior.
