Another top executive leaves Angie’s List

Angie’s List has lost its second, high-ranking officer in four months, with the departure of Chief Technology Officer Manu Thapar.

The Indianapolis-based consumer reviews firm announced Thapar's departure on Monday morning in a regulatory filing. “Thapar’s employment with the company has ended effective September 27,” according to the filing.

Thapar had been with Angie's List two years. It was not immediately clear whether he resigned or was terminated. Conspicuously absent in Monday’s announcement was the type of praise CEO Bill Oesterle heaped on Chief Financial Officer Robert Millard when Millard announced last March that he would step down on June 28.

In the first nine months of this year, Thapar was busy exercising his Angie’s List stock options, which yielded gains of at least $730,000, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

An Angie's List representative did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday morning. Pending Thapar’s replacement, the responsibilities of CTO have been assumed by other members of Angie’s engineering team.

Angie's List shares tumbled nearly 6 percent on Monday, and were down another 7 percent in morning trading on Tuesday, to $20.83 per share. The stock price is up 75 percent since the beginning of the year.

Monday's filing said that Tharpar is eligible to receive severance benefits as promised in his offer letter from Sept. 16, 2011. That letter specified that if the company decided to sever employment without cause, he would be entitled to his annual salary of $300,000 plus his targeted bonus, which was $160,000.

Before joining Angie’s List Thapar was vice president of engineering at Walmart.com. He also has held various positions at Myspace, Yahoo! and Cisco Systems.

Thapar helped oversee an expansion of e-commerce functions at Angie’s List, which is best-known for publishing consumer reviews of plumbers, mechanics and other service providers.

In recent years, Angie’s began offering online deals directly to members through its Storefront and Big Deal functions.

Millard's former CFO position was filled last month by Tom Fox, former senior director of business planning at wireless phone maker Nokia.

Angie's List has vexed industry watchers since it went public in November 2011. The 18-year-old company has never turned an annual profit, leading investors to wonder whether it is wildly overvalued or on the brink of hitting a sweet spot for profits.

The firm is growing at a torrid rate. It had paid memberships at the end of the second quarter of 2.2 million, up 51 percent from a year earlier. Revenue in the first six months of 2013 topped $111 million, up from $61 million. And its loss in the first half of this year shrank to $22 million, compared with $37 million in the first half of 2012.