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NewslettersCFO Daily

3 steps Peloton’s new CEO—a former CFO—should take right away

Sheryl Estrada
By
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl Estrada
Senior Writer and author of CFO Daily
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Sheryl Estrada
By
Sheryl Estrada
Sheryl Estrada
Senior Writer and author of CFO Daily
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February 9, 2022, 6:37 AM ET
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Good morning,

A former CFO is the new CEO at Peloton Interactive.

Barry McCarthy, who served as CFO of Spotify (2015-2020) and CFO of Netflix (1999-2010), will take the helm effective Feb. 9, the interactive fitness platform company announced on Tuesday. The former CEO, John Foley, stepped down and will become executive chair amid news the company will shed about 2,800 jobs, impacting approximately 20% of corporate positions.

Peloton’s shares have tumbled more than 80% from their all-time high a year ago, Fortune reported. Activist investors have called both for Foley’s resignation and for Peloton to explore a sale of the business. Nike and Amazon were both considering buying the company, according to reports. 

“Barry is a proven leader, well known for his financial acumen and record of driving transformative change at iconic companies including Netflix and Spotify,” Karen Boone, lead independent director at Peloton, said in a statement.

A leader with finance expertise is just what the company needs at this time, Robert Kelley, a professor of management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, told me. “Peloton has crashed,” he says. McCarthy’s experience as a CFO will “be a major contributor to helping right the ship,” Kelley says. The company’s stock has taken a downturn; they’re laying people off; and “investors are rightfully saying, ‘What the heck’s going on here?’” he says.

I asked Kelley, also the author of the book The Critical Path Manifesto, what are three areas McCarthy needs to focus on first to fix Peloton. He had three recommendations:

First, get finances in order while being transparent to investors, employees, customers, and suppliers about the state of the business, he says. 

Second: be in touch with customers to gauge current and future demand for the product, Kelley says. “During the pandemic, Peloton had all this demand from people who were stuck at home and couldn’t go to their gyms,” he told me. “But they mistook that for ongoing demand.” (Writing for Fortune, Ben Carlson has an excellent explanation of how that happened here.)

Third, figure out what kind of production they’re going to do and make sure the supply chain is in order to produce for any market demands, he says. “I’m guessing that the suppliers are a little bit jittery about whether Peloton is going to be a growing concern, so they’re going to want money upfront,” Kelley says. “A good CFO brings skills to those kinds of negotiations.”

Regarding Peloton, right now, an individual who has a financial background can understand more so how to manage through this situation compared to someone with CEO experience, says Paul Manning, managing director at The Bowdoin Group, an executive search firm. “[A CEO] is more of what I would call innovative, thinking more in terms of right brain, versus left brain,” he says.



See you tomorrow.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

***Two quick notes: Please take a few minutes to complete this short CFO Daily survey. For an annual Fortune.com subscription you can use my code, ESTRADA22, for 50% off. Thank you for supporting our journalism.

Big deal

The State of Corporate Reputation and Business Performance, a new report by Signal AI, found that 72% of leaders surveyed believe reputation will be the main driver of business performance in the next five years. And, in the next 12 months, about 92% of leaders believe ESG issues will impact a company's reputation. The report also found that 70% of corporate affairs teams surveyed plan to increase their investment in tech and data by an average of 63% in the next year. The findings are based on a survey of 1,000 C-level executives. 

A photo of a graph by Signal AI illustrating that 72% of business leaders believe reputation will be the main driver of business in the next five years.

Going deeper

A new report by Deloitte offers an approach for first-time public company CFOs and management teams to become ready for Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) compliance. The federal law established measures including the Public Accounting Oversight Board to prevent corporate fraud. Deloitte provides a framework to help CEOs and CFOs of newly public companies understand how to become SOX-ready by focusing on people, process and technology, according to the report. 

Leaderboard

Dean Freeman was named CFO at Benson Hill, Inc. (NYSE: BHIL), a food technology company. DeAnn Brunts has elected to return to retirement from her full-time executive role effective following the company's filing with the SEC of its 2021 Annual Report on Form 10-K. Brunts will remain on the company's board of directors. Freeman officially joined Benson Hill as EVP of finance on Feb. 2, 2022. He will work closely with Brunts over the next two months to ensure an effective transition. Freeman brings nearly 30 years of experience. Most recently, he served as the president and CEO of First Source Capital, a commercial finance company he founded in 2019. Prior to that, he held roles as CFO at GCP Applied Technologies and interim CEO at Watts Water Technologies,.

René Just CFO at Centogene N.V. (Nasdaq: CNTG), has resigned, effective March 31, after the expected filing date of Centogene's Annual Report on Form 20-F, according to the company. Miguel Coego Rios was appointed EVP of finance and legal and Interim CFO, effective Feb. 08. Most recently, Rios was VP and general manager South Europe at Orphazyme A/S. Before that he was VP and CFO at Mundipharma.

Overheard

“A lot of the recovery that’s yet to take place is still in service and tourism-related industries. Having an event like the Super Bowl come to the region and bringing back individuals, with their visitor spending is only going to have a positive economic benefit for the region.”

—Shannon Sedgwick, director of research at Los Angeles County Economic Development, on the potential economic impact for the city when the Los Angeles Rams take on the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2022 Super Bowl on Sunday, as told to U.S. News & World Report. 

This is the web version of CFO Daily, a newsletter on the trends and individuals shaping corporate finance. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox. 

About the Author
Sheryl Estrada
By Sheryl EstradaSenior Writer and author of CFO Daily
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Sheryl Estrada is a senior writer at Fortune, where she covers the corporate finance industry, Wall Street, and corporate leadership. She also authors CFO Daily.

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