It’s an old adage on Wall Street that not all CEOs are founders, and not all founders are CEOs.

Such has certainly been the case with Under Armour, the upstart retail conglomerate founded 1996 by former college football player Kevin Plank.

Plank began the business from his grandmother’s house selling t-shirts out of the trunk of his car. The company went public in 2005 reaching an all-time-high share price of $52.00 ten years later.

Flash forward to 2024: Under Armour stock (UA, UAA) is off by more than 85% from record highs. The company's market cap stands at $2.8 billion, versus $45 billion for Lululemon and $142 billion for Nike, according to Yahoo Finance comparison data.

As many can attest, not everyone is cut out for the CEO role. Plank stepped down as head of the company in 2019 amid financial missteps and public controversies. Analysts who follow the company say Under Armour was slow to keep up with market trends and embrace the athletic leisure market, something its competitors were quick to jump on. While out as CEO, Plank still held 65% of the voting rights when retail apparel executive Patrick Frisk filled the role until late 2022 when first-time CEO and longtime Marriott International executive Stephanie Linnartz was brought in to right the ship.

Linnartz's goal? To turn things around both culturally and financially and clean up the struggling sports apparel company. She sat down with Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi at the end of 2023 to talk about her progress and her “Protect This House 3” three-year plan.

But by April 2024, just over a year into her tenure, Linnartz was gone. Plank, who still owns 65% of the company, surprised both Wall Street and Main Street with news that he was returning to his former CEO post.

Neither Plank nor Linnartz responded to Yahoo Finance’s requests for a comment or interview on the shakeup.

Whether Linnartz’s plans to turn Under Armour around come to fruition will never be completely known. What will be known sooner than later is whether Plank’s return to the CEO role pays off.

So far, investors and analysts are proving an impatient lot: while no one knows for sure how much time and patience Wall Street will extend to Plank, the consensus is that he will need to show what the company's next big play will be sooner than later.