CEO resigns from major broadband company in South Africa
July 8th 2025
Deon Geyser, the CEO of Liquid Networks for Cassava Technologies and former CEO of Liquid Telecom South Africa, has resigned.
Geyser’s departure is somewhat surprising, as his promotion to CEO of Liquid Networks for Cassava Technologies was announced in February 2025.
In his new role, he was responsible for the connectivity business across Africa, including all of Liquid’s fibre, satellite, wireless, and wholesale voice and connectivity services.
Neither Cassava nor Liquid Intelligence Technologies released a statement about Geyser’s resignation, but Liquid confirmed it when asked.
“Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa confirms that Deon Geyser has decided to pursue other opportunities outside of the company,” it said.
“The organisation wishes him the best of luck in his endeavours and appreciates his contribution to the business during his time with us.”
Geyser said his last day with Liquid was on Monday, 30 June 2025 and that his time at the company was a remarkable season of his life.
“Over the last 4.5 years my team and I managed to implement an end-to-end transformation programme across the business,” he said.
According to Geyser, the programme delivered a focused go-to-market strategy, improved operational excellence, financial discipline and investment rigor.
He said it also brought the brand refresh to Liquid Intelligent Technologies from Liquid Telecom, an inclusive culture refresh, a robust employee engagement platform and an excellent talent development programme.
“These initiatives have led to significant net promoter score improvements, customer trust and loyalty, and finally significant shareholder returns with market-leading growth rates in revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow,” said Geyser.
“Big thank you to our customers, employees, partners, shareholders, and management team for the trust and support during this season.”
Geyser’s departure comes amid parent company Liquid Group and subsidiary Liquid Intelligent Technologies experiencing financial challenges.
Liquid’s financial problems
In December, Cassava announced that it raised $90 million (R1.7 billion) with participation from U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation (Finnfund), and Google.
Subsidiary Liquid Intelligent Technologies also refinanced its long-term loan on a multi-tenor basis, with Standard Bank, Rand Merchant Bank, Nedbank, and International Finance Corporation providing a new R4-billion debt facility.
The fresh equity and refinanced loan were necessary for Cassava to avoid breaching its loan covenants and entering a liquidity crunch.
Fitch and Moody’s downgraded Liquid Telecom’s credit rating last year to account for the risk that the above restructuring and equity injection did not happen as planned.
However, even with the new funding in place, Fitch warned that the company was not out of the woods.
“Liquid Telecom had $57 million (R1 billion) cash on its balance sheet, but $43 million (R790 million) of cash was drawn from the revolving credit facility at the end of the 2024 financial year,” it explained.
“Cash declined to $48 million (R882 million) in Q1 of the 2025 financial year with the revolving credit facility substantially drawn, amid continued foreign exchange pressures, compared with $40 million (R735 million) required for operations.”
Fitch noted that a lot would need to go wrong for Liquid to actually default on its loans.
It said it expected a default from factors such as higher competitive intensity, increased technological risk, loss of key contracts, adverse regulatory or political actions, or considerable currency depreciation in key geographies.
“This would result in financial loss, reputational damage or prohibitive regulatory fines or conditions,” it said.
However, it also warned that Liquid could face further downgrades if progress is not made in refinancing existing debt at par.
Ineffective implementation of management actions to improve operating performance, accelerating negative free cash flow, could also result in further downgrades.
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